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I think that anyone who's created something deserves a bit of admiration/praise along with the criticism and in that regard the example fits perfectly, IMHO. As a programmer, it's worth keeping in mind that your work—with any luck—will touch the lives of tens of thousands of people. If your work is poor, you will make those lives worse. If your work is excellent, you will make those lives better. Everything you do, for good or ill, may be multiplied by a huge number. This is how programmers can change the world, and how they can make piles of money. But with this power comes a responsibility: We have to listen to those users, and we have to give them the best we can. If we're unlucky, the users will say nice things while suffering in silence. If we're lucky, some of those users will gripe and moan about something specific. Many programmers spend a huge amount of effort trying to get users to vent their frustrations in detail. One of the most brutally effective things a programmer can do is watch a user through one-way glass from a sound-proof room. You will sit there cursing yourself, mutter, "How could I have been so stupid? I have to fix that immediately." Now, if a novice programmer shows me their Rails app in person, I'm going to compliment some stuff, rip some other stuff apart (with instructions on how to fix it), and point them towards useful tools. But if a programmer releases software to a wide audience, and that software sucks, I'll gripe as much as any other user. (Of course, if the software is open source, I know the answer will be "Patches, please!", so I skip the griping and send patches along with enthusiastic thank yous for the code.) If you don't think your work is ready to touch the lives of ten thousand people, and you don't want that responsibility, then I actually recommend against doing a "Show HN". Find a smaller, more personal group, where people will interact with you, and not just your code. And I say all of this as somebody who has zero patience for nasty personal remarks. The feedback you quoted was brutal, but as a working professional, I've invested both time and money to elicit similar feedback. |