When did this community become more concerned with tone than correctness? The top of this thread is filled with people saying that the tone is bad, it's unproductive, it's unnecessary, etc. Yet nobody seems concerned about the published book filled with bad information that a lot of people are going to "learn" from. What gives?
There's been a pretty strong concern about tone on HN from the early days, mainly (afaict) driven by Paul Graham having an interest in and repeatedly commenting about it. It's not the only concern, but avoidance of flaming and mean-spirited comments, in addition to avoidance of vapid or dumb comments, is one of the openly and repeatedly stated design goals of the community. I.e. it should be intelligent discussion, conducted in a collegial tone.
(This is a general comment on whether tone is and/or should be important on HN, not an evaluation of tptacek's review or implication that this comment/gist in particular would fall afoul of the intended HN standards.)
The problem I have is that people are freaking out over extremely minor matter of tone while ignoring important technical problems. Worrying about tone is fine. Worrying about it to such an extreme degree in preference to other things is not.
Being right used to be the ultimate trump over social dynamics, which is what made tech a breath of fresh air to so many. Now that the field has become socially popular, it's been mired in the same vapid talking heads as everywhere else. And the people who actually know things are much quieter, as they generally have better things to do than compete for airtime.