"Not something a dilettante can just jump into after a teenage diet of scifi" seemed obviously a snarky internet putdown. I'm pretty sure the bulk of the community would see it that way. If you have specialist level knowledge on a topic, that's wonderful, but then the thing to do is share some of what you know in a conversational way.
If you say you had no intention of being a jerk or putting anyone down, I believe you. But you did break the community standards (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). I wish I could find a better way to persuade you not to post like that, because you obviously have valuable contributions to make.
Edit: maybe this would help. Sometimes people post harshly critical comments that are modeled after the communication style of more specialized environments, like literary reviews or academic colloquia. In those smaller environments, critique is often done in a concentrated and devastating style; that's how the game is played and how mastery is demonstrated, and it spurs the other players to get better.
The thing to understand is that this game doesn't work in large, flat internet spaces that are open to everybody. Here it just starts fires, drives away thoughtful participants, and encourages others—who are neither knowledgeable nor witty but far more numerous—to join in on what they think is the game, and it just gets degraded and degrading. The cost isn't worth it.
It took me years to understand this, because I used to be irritated by the idea of bland communication. Who wants verbal blancmange? What I didn't realize is how context-specific this is. The highly-critical game doesn't translate into the broader internet playing field. It just makes things nasty and dumb. I've written about this in the past with this analogy: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....
Basically, it's a case of the-medium-is-the-message. We need to adjust our commenting style to the reality of the internet forum, or this place will get worse than it already is.
The issue: It may sound like snark, but it is also literally what happens, and in particular literally the blog post content (the only exception in Feathers's case may be "teenage" - I don't know when he first read Flatland - but given the age of the average software developer, is substantially accurate.)
If you say you had no intention of being a jerk or putting anyone down, I believe you. But you did break the community standards (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). I wish I could find a better way to persuade you not to post like that, because you obviously have valuable contributions to make.
Edit: maybe this would help. Sometimes people post harshly critical comments that are modeled after the communication style of more specialized environments, like literary reviews or academic colloquia. In those smaller environments, critique is often done in a concentrated and devastating style; that's how the game is played and how mastery is demonstrated, and it spurs the other players to get better.
The thing to understand is that this game doesn't work in large, flat internet spaces that are open to everybody. Here it just starts fires, drives away thoughtful participants, and encourages others—who are neither knowledgeable nor witty but far more numerous—to join in on what they think is the game, and it just gets degraded and degrading. The cost isn't worth it.
It took me years to understand this, because I used to be irritated by the idea of bland communication. Who wants verbal blancmange? What I didn't realize is how context-specific this is. The highly-critical game doesn't translate into the broader internet playing field. It just makes things nasty and dumb. I've written about this in the past with this analogy: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....
Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21237524 and more linked from there.
Basically, it's a case of the-medium-is-the-message. We need to adjust our commenting style to the reality of the internet forum, or this place will get worse than it already is.