Hacker News Reader

I think in this case it hit the front page simply because people like me didn't know this tree command and immediately found it useful. That it be trivial to install is not the main point I think.

To get on the front page, you only need a few upvotes in a short period of time. I don't think anything has changed. At this moment, it only has 6 votes.

It is a nice command that people will find useful. Stuff like this should get a few votes.

You only need to get a small amount of votes to appear on the frontpage, and its 3:14am now and 2:14am when you wrote that for HNs West Coast audience. I don't think there is much legitimate competition out there for this article.

Not only that but it's 10 times easier with Homebrew. So it's an incorrect article imo. Shouldn't make the frontpage. Especially with that title.