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Comment by PaulDavisThe1st | Hacker News Reader

Presumably we're talking about this, from 8 months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24789536

in which the end of my final comment was:

"I know what the differences are - I've worked in this field for 20 years. I was just trying to give you a gentle smiley faced nudge to jump in on a "better" version of what you've already done in order to Make The World A Better Place."

It seems that this attitude rubs some people the wrong way, and I certainly apologize for that. I don't apologize for my belief that it's better when exploring new projects to find out as much as possible about what has been done before. I made the mistake of not doing that when I was younger, and my software has been the worse for it ever since. If you feel that you or others are immune from this, awesome, go for it, but give me room in the skeptics corner.

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I can tell you want to offer helpful feedback and you are not trying to be negative, you are well intentioned and your advice comes from a place of knowledge and experience.

That said, I don't think "Show HN" should be considered a public academic peer review. The internet is full of enough negativity.

If you want to offer advice on HN, try framing it like this:

[GREAT WORK] I especially like [FEATURE 1..i] the [SOMETHING ELSE] is [WELL WRITTEN|WELL DOCUMENTED].

If you are looking to [EXPAND/EXTEND/DEVELOP] [FEATURE/DEPLOYMENT/APPLICATIONS] I recommend [BOOK|BLOG|PAPER]

> If you feel that you or others are immune from this, awesome, go for it, but give me room in the skeptics corner.

You are quite keen on feedback, so take the feedback offered by myself and others here into consideration. Communication skills are not a weakness, they are a strength.

[ You can see this comment was written in a positive, hopefully helpful manner ]

This is a lovely breakdown of positive, constructive feedback. I try to practice this online and in person, likely because of how much I personally benefit from the rare moments where I’m on the receiving end. I believe it’s important for us to motivate and inspire one-another whenever possible.

This is a nice formula. There's an argument to be had for learning the skill of inoffensive commentary. I prefer to recieve feedback in this form. Confusingly I also sympathize with the crowd who would rather state things in more forceful terms, in the name of being genuine and impactful... We tend to focus on things that are highly critical. I'd prefer if people felt happier after reading a comment of mine, and maybe see me as a friendly person...but I question the overrelience on pleasantry, I think it belies some insecurity.

> I don't apologize for my belief that..

Nobody here is suggesting it's bad to tell someone about prior work. They're suggesting it can be done without belittling the person's project.

(Also, in my case you were hardly just telling me about other projects. You said that my web app did something that can already be done in an existing native language/environment, so I should have "just" ported that whole language/environment to the browser instead of building my web app.)

some people just want to create, and that's ok. if you think they might be interested in something someone else has done, it's easy enough to say 'you might be interested in...'

no need to talk about 'better', etc.

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