I have also been disappointed in the change of HN over the last few years but he picked some really poor examples to try to show case those issues, this is more jumping on that band wagon while not understanding what the banner on the side says. I will admit I was quickly lost while trying to read this chest beating bravado manifesto mixed (strangely enough) with a lack of self confidence oozing from every other sentence. You know what impresses hackers? Code, quality code that does something non trivial. In academia either no one pays attention to your work and you can think it's great without anyone arguing with you, or they try to tear something truly novel apart like a pack of rabid hyena. When you get on the front page of hacker news some people are going to do the same thing. Think of it as publishing a ground breaking paper. Programmers can be rather laconic, and if this means using a short sentence to let you know you aren't explaining your product/project succinctly enough, or you are requiring to many clicks just to get to the meat of what you want to tell people perhaps it's good advice and you should take it (along with a grain of salt because SOME people are just assholes but assholes rarely give actionable valuable feedback) especially if it's multiple people.