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Comment by sanderjd | Hacker News Reader

I'm so sick of seeing this pattern of 1) person makes tool they find useful, 2) person releases tool publicly for free, 3) other person comes across tool but doesn't find it useful, 4) other person publicly denigrates tool as being universally not-useful.

I just don't get it.

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@dangerlibrary simply says: Do not re-invent the wheel. I cannot see any real-world production environment where this new server is better approach then activating a tiny config file. Thus, it is a very good lesson to the author: Use what is out there and build what is missing.

I very rarely see a "hey I made this!" post here that doesn't include one or more comments along the lines of "this already exists!". I don't mind these sorts of comments when they tell me something I didn't know - "you can achieve something similar by doing coodle with well-known tool doodle!", "there is somewhat-obscure tool foodle that does exactly this!" - there are some comments like that in this thread. What I dislike is when these sorts of comments are along the lines of, "you should have just done the thing that you made the tool to avoid having to do!". It is just dismissal and leaves nobody the wiser.

It seems delusional to think that this sort of comment is somehow a good learning experience for a library author. Everyone knows that you shouldn't reinvent the wheel, but there are reasonable disagreements on what exactly that means.

I don't think I said anything negative about the tool itself, or about the author of the tool, who seems perfectly happy with it.

You're right that I don't think it's useful to have a proliferation of tools that do one thing worse than a general-purpose tool.

I don't want an avocado peeler - I'll use a knife and I'll recommend using a knife to others.

It's your tone more than anything. I read some of your previous posts to see if you were a d-bag and I came to the conclusion that you're not[1]. This reads more like the post was a button-pusher for you. I can relate. :)

Unfortunately, even with the tone removed, the comment hits that "top-voted middlebrow" button for many of the other people on the site. I would however say that for TFA itself as well.

[1] the opinion of some random interdweeb carries a lot of weight, I know. :)

Great. Good for you.

Your initial comment, however, is filled with a denigrating tone. It is that tone your parent is addressing. Not so much the content. The tone. It is unkind.

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