Nit picking is indeed annoying. In regards to efficiency however, I’m of the opinion that ignoring nit pick or venomous comments and instead positively engaging with other folks in the thread who have useful comments and feedback would be more effective.

Now some of the first comment chains people will see are hostile interactions between the author and commenters.

For someone considering adoption of the tool, feature requests, or pull requests, they are likely to consider how communicating with the author might be similarly hostile should disagreements arise.

It is unfortunate people often miss the forest for the trees in PRs and on hacker news with comments like the one to which you replied. It is easy to critique and difficult to create, so having people critique very small aspects of a project you created without acknowledging the actual project itself is irritating, but I still think either ignoring them or providing your rebuttal without malice will always be more effective for evangelizing your work.

In the comment you linked, that post received some similar feedback as well. I hope this did not come across as judgmental. It’s an area I also have worked on in my personal life and this was more so an attempt to share my thoughts about the negative ways this communication style has impacted me before.

Anyways, this project is a cool idea and I have respect for the time and effort you put into it. Wishing you well going forward.