Quickly checking in to respond, as the "extremely active 4 year old account" in question...
The comment was clearly poorly phrased. When I made it, there were no negative comments on the story, and it was really just intended to question the "programmer prodigy" aspect, not to criticise the deceased or imply that she was not an impressive young person.
I hate (!) to discard any part of the english language; I think all expressions have their place, including "I hate to be that guy, but" - however, in hindsight, the net effect was to lump my relatively neutral comment in with all the haters on the thread, so, in practice, it was proven to be a poor choice.
That said, I do dislike the habit of idolising deceased people as perfect in every way. It reminds me of the "HN Salesmanship hero" story (where I commented that he wasn't my hero and I resented this attribution, for which I got badly downvoted). This person was clearly impressive without making stuff up about them. From all the comments and interviews, it in fact seems that her programming ability, far from being prodigy-like, was in fact the least impressive of her other personal traits.
To conclude: had I known that there would be a pile-up of hateful belittling following my comment, I wouldn't have made it, or if I felt the need to ask that question, I would have done so in a much more carefully phrased way. I fully take the blame for not realising that this type of thread could descend down to that level, but my intention was certainly not to belittle.