Comments include "They're probably lying," "This is
    like a parent posting their kindergartener's first
    crayon house-and-trees-and-sun drawings out into
    blogs," etc. And most of those comments were heavily
    endorsed by this community

Hmm; I remember that thread as much more positive. Let's look back over top level comments and look at ratios?

     [1] supportive: I did this kind of thing too!
     [2] dismissive: this sound suspicious
     [3] supportive: nostalgic
     [4] supportive: modern stuff shouldn't be harder to use
     [5] supportive: I did something similar
     [6] supportive: astonishing story
     [7] dismissive: nitpicking remembered memory sizes
     [8] supportive: fascinating story
     [9] supportive: we should be talking about the op, not ourselves
    [10] supportive: I did similar stuff too
    [11] dismissive: win2x > win98
    [12] supportive: similar experience; would love to talk
    [13] dismissive: not an os, it's a shell
    ...

Seems largely positive? And I'm not seeing either of the two quotes you reference.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747260 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747255 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747247 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747523 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747278 [6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747624 [7] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747248 [8] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747244 [9] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8748571 [10] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8751978 [11] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747364 [12] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747228 [13] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747712