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Comment by haswell | Hacker News Reader

Just to be clear, what is the purpose of this question as asked?

There's plenty of room for utilities like this. I purchased Boop, and it's not bad, but I'm not a fan of the UX. DevUtils looks interesting to me and I'll give it a shot.

Even if there was 100% feature parity between these apps, the different approach to UX alone is enough to justify its existence, an existence which doesn't really need to be justified to begin with.

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It's a valid question, though I agree it could certainly be phrased in a less confrontational manner.

I don't understand how the purpose of the question is not clear. I intend to know how does this featured app differs from Boop, that's all. And instead, I get a -1 from someone, haha.

It may not have been intentional, but the way the question was phrased, it sounded extremely dismissive and borderline accusatory. If that was not the intent, that's great.

Honest feedback, no ill will.

Alright, I think it might have come across like that which in no way was my intent and for that purpose, I have rephrased my question.

Asking "how is this different" is not dismissive. It's just a question. How else should one ask for a useful comparison?

> "There's another app called Boop that seems similar. How would you compare your app to Boop?"

I certainly agree that "how is this different" is not dismissive by itself. But the whole of the comment came across as very dismissive.

It's possible that I overreacted, but that's how I interpreted it.

I don't think you overreacted, the "Just to be clear" and other wording seems like gaslighting to me, assuming that the author knows about this alternative but knowing that is unlikely.

A much better way to phrase this question would be something like:

> On the surface this looks like it solves similar problems to Boop, an app I use to do similar things. Have you heard of Boop? If so, how do you think this compares?

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