HN's front page sometimes has a flow to it for some stories. If a big comment thread starts about the wisdom of rewriting software, often someone will submit Joel's "Things You Should Never Do, Part I" [1]. More recently, if someone proposes a cracking contest, you'll get "The Fallacy of Cracking Contests" [2]. etc.

So my question is, this sounds like it's part of some thread or other; what is it?

"What is the context of this post?" is a completely different question than the more-often-asked one "What is this doing here, by which I passively-aggressively mean this shouldn't be here?", but I understand the confusion (no sarcasm, I really do). thisiswrong's reply is what I was looking for.

[1]: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6932648 ; see tptacek's top-level post

yes, it is not news if the link is a year old and deals with a topic that is no longer relevant.

This is noise, unless there is some related context.