I didn't see it as tone policing. From my point of view, I saw a very interesting application being shared and I hoped it would be good and prosperous so i can use it. When the first comment says "i hate that you do X" it is a bit discouraging towards a team of developers who have probably poured tons of free hours into making this. Words play with psychology, and it is my personal interest that these devs have good morale to make this app great, and that meand giving them feedback about obvious mistakes in a tone that does not hurt this morale. I hope that make sense

I agree that this should be in the XDG directory or AppData, but be kind, y'all -- this is open source, it is a gift someone has labored over and given you. There are much nicer ways to suggest improvements than calling it "sloppy shit".

edit: it's not actually open source by the OSI definition it seems [1], but it is reasonably close.

[1] https://futo.org/about/futo-statement-on-opensource/

I was very blunt and impersonal. People worked hard on a thing and my first reaction was criticism, without even the added overall view of "I love this thing, but here is a small thing that bothers me." I could have been more courteous and human about things.

I stand by the points I made, but I could have been friendlier. I normally make an effort to be friendly as I can about things, but I absolutely did not here. I hope that nothing I said came across as vitriol, but rather, valid criticism. I'm a strong believer in criticizing the things you love, but I need to remember that random comments on HN aren't the place where people know I love the thing, and my criticism needs context.

So no, it wasn't really that odious, but it was other things. Do I feel stricken with guilt or remorse about what I said? No. Could I have been friendlier? yes. Should I have been friendlier? Probably.