[coder543]

Because a lot of your comments in this thread are "missing the point" or (unintentionally) misleading at best, and it's easier for people to use a downvote to make those comments less prominent in the discussion than to go through the trouble of trying to explain why the comments are missing the point or unintentionally misleading.

But, a lot of people have gone through the effort to leave explanations in this case. Isn't that good enough?

For one unaddressed example:

> You can still use standard kernel-provided synchronization objects (mutex/events/semaphores) in your "lock-free applications", as long as you provide timeouts to blocking wait() calls, and handle abandoned objects gracefully.

This might be technically true, but atomics provide significant performance benefits compared to using a mutex with a timeout, and I don't think of "lock free" as relying on busy loops as you seem to think in your comments. I'm sure a busy loop makes sense in very specific algorithms, and mutexes themselves often use a limited amount of busy waiting to avoid context switches. You can simulate atomics with mutexes, but that's not the point. Lock free is hard to do correctly. Mutexes create the possibility of a deadlock, which is incompatible with being lock-free, so you have to avoid all the footguns of lock-free and the footgun of using mutexes.

So, yes, you can use standard sync objects... but that doesn't make anything better in this case. It misses the point. "Technically correct" isn't always good enough to get an upvote.

If you don't agree, that's fine... but this is completely uncalled for and against the community guidelines:

> This community has truly deteriorated over the years.

No one is obligated to upvote things they consider incorrect, and downvotes are perfectly suitable for this purpose under HN guidelines.

[md5person]

> "While technically true... I don't see how it contributes anything useful to the conversation, so I downvoted it."

If you don't see how it contributes to the conversation - why not just ignore it then? Just because you think this doesn't contribute to the conversation, doesn't make it true.

> "If you don't agree, that's fine..."

Clearly it's not "fine", otherwise you wouldn't try to silence comments you disagree with by down-voting them.

This is my last comment on HN.

[coder543]

> why not just ignore it then?

Because it's misleading and/or missing the point. As stated. Why would I want more people to read something that I believe is misleading?

> Clearly it's not "fine"

Once again missing the point. The prevailing opinion on HN is what will get upvoted, and a lot of other stuff will get downvoted. I have seen that prevailing opinion be hilariously wrong before.

If you want to be heard with an unpopular opinion, you have to make a compelling argument... you can't expect to be upvoted to the top just because you're sharing an opinion. It's rare for a comment to be lukewarm enough for no one to feel strongly enough to downvote it. It's going up, going down, or it's on a thread no one is reading. Downvotes don't mean people hate the person leaving the downvoted comments; it's just a tool for disagreeing with comments.

> This is my last comment on HN.

Because people disagreed with you? People even left explanations, but that wasn't enough.