Yes. HN is an absolutely fantastic community. That's why we are here. As every community it has its own idiosyncrasies. Recognizing them and poking fun into ourselves strengthens rather than weakens then community.
I have a different perspective. Looking at the original post, [1] it wasn't labeled "Show HN" or posted by the project's author (antirez). So my first read on seeing it in the HN front page would be "hey, I found this cool project". And these people commented with links to similar projects, which I take as something like "if you liked that project, you might like this one, too", or "I wonder how these compare". I find that sort of comment helpful and curiosity-inspiring. Very different from "you shouldn't have bothered writing this when some other project exists". I can't tell from the date-resolution timestamps but they might well have been posted before the author showed up in the thread.
He could have had dozens of additional responses if he had picked a name that some obscure 80s technology already used. HN will bikeshed endlessly about overloaded names.
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Quintessential Hacker News
To be fair, I think ”one person responded positively and offered to help” is also quintessential HN.
Yes. HN is an absolutely fantastic community. That's why we are here. As every community it has its own idiosyncrasies. Recognizing them and poking fun into ourselves strengthens rather than weakens then community.
Not mentioned in OP: Ezra/ezmobius (RIP) whipped out a client in Ruby and posted it in that same thread.
Add in a dash of complaining about name clashes
These are the sort of people whom you invite over for a nice dinner and they ask why didn't we all go to The French Laundry instead.
I have a different perspective. Looking at the original post, [1] it wasn't labeled "Show HN" or posted by the project's author (antirez). So my first read on seeing it in the HN front page would be "hey, I found this cool project". And these people commented with links to similar projects, which I take as something like "if you liked that project, you might like this one, too", or "I wonder how these compare". I find that sort of comment helpful and curiosity-inspiring. Very different from "you shouldn't have bothered writing this when some other project exists". I can't tell from the date-resolution timestamps but they might well have been posted before the author showed up in the thread.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=494649
He could have had dozens of additional responses if he had picked a name that some obscure 80s technology already used. HN will bikeshed endlessly about overloaded names.