I don't believe so. Just incremental improvements, no breakthrough. As for HN popularity, that is often a matter of chance. If a submission gets a few early upvotes and makes it to frontpage, it snowballs from there, often regardless of anything particularly noteworthy.
Well, someone has to find it interesting - otherwise it will just be ignored. I assume.
Probably because the Nim folks just did their annual survey, and anyone participating would be reminded of C2Nim in at least one question.