Perhaps readers are happy to see something about a hacker hacking than the latest Elon-love-fest or continued Apple drama or discussion of SF real estate.
Mayhaps people like supporting someone who made something nice and useful, learned something in the process, and helped us remember why we do what we do.
Well, I always thought HackerNews was supposed to be about hackers doing newsworthy things... Dissing the establishment is all fine and good, but personally I love seeing people building stuff, especially first web apps.
Well, you would think that a community of hackers that are focused on, you know, building stuff would be supportive and encouraging of others who like tinkering and building stuff. It's the way to keep the momentum and keep newbies in the ecosystem rather than scaring them off via derision or plain ignoring them.
Strange as it may seem even Musk/Jobs etc. didn't create their masterpieces the very first time out of thin air. They would have started on a project that would be considered plain/pointless/boring/embarrassing, but they built upon that experience and platform. Something to remember when talking to the young creators who will be continuing their work in the future.
There is a lot of very cool stuff that gets built which never makes it to the front-page here. Again, it's not about being un-supportive or derisive it's about there actually being nothing particularly interesting in this project (and somehow the defense of that is always this kind of hand-waving calling out people's bad manners for pointing out the obvious), you can have a quality ecosystem or a warm, fuzzy, let's praise everyone ecosystem - pick one.
I totally get your point. I've posted my own projects here in the past only to see them sink faster than a tabloid editors ethics, but I take that as part of the 'luck' and natural filtering nature of this platform. It certainly doesn't mean I bear a grudge for any other post that does make it to #1. Especially if it saves me from the 700th post this week on "Why I won't be buying another Apple device ever"...
I really don't think this is (or should be) a place where everyone gets a participation medal, but from what I have seen, the success and failures of posts by people announcing new products here seems to mirror the success rate (and seemingly random stickiness) of real world product launches, so perhaps that might help creators to get used to it and build up some resilience.