I do think you're objectively correct in your post, but I think what the grandparent meant was that "The author isn't actually interested in playing Contra on his website" which is why QoL stuff like that wasn't added and it "smells" like it should be there if you cared about playing on the thing you actually shared to HN. I know the first thing I would do would be to add wasd + mouse support to Contra, since the control scheme is the reason I don't try to play it. But at the same time I have never been interested in games that deliberately limit your controls as a form of difficulty (feels like a Japanese gamedev thing, from Resident Evil to Dark Souls)
And this is exactly the same with ESDF.
edit: figured out why that nostalgia happened. I was revisiting an old flash game I liked [0] and people were complaining to the dev about this exact key ghosting issue to him when it wasn't his fault but a fault of their keyboards, and in the Newgrounds description he links to a forum post [1] elaborating on the issue
[0] https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/547881
[1] https://board.flashkit.com/board/showthread.php?789015-wont-...
Yes, by being the great equalizer. But the question is why WASD and not something else eg WSDX[0] or some shit like ASDF. And the ghosting explains it well enough.