I agree with your comments about "workaholic" and the "usual HN moral". I'll be better.
I disagree with your implication that my comment does not try to help the OP with keeping his skills up. I think it's a very legitimate question and my advice is to try and find a challenging job. I don't understand how my comment can be read as a dismissal of the OP's question. It's a great question that I relate to.
Also, I realize now that you read "workaholic" as a slur and probably most people did. For anyone who felt attacked/offended by that: it was not meant that way and I think I mistranslated the term. I did not mean it as a slur and I wrote nearby that I envy the people with that kind of energy / work ethic. I miss the time when I was a workaholic (it was before I became a parent).
I do feel that there is a growing culture of "work over everything" in startup land and I believe that this is a bad thing. When I wrote my comment, most top comments were indeed examples of ways to squeeze every single ounce out of the day (they are again as I write this). I don't understand why you imply that proposing an alterative ("skill-up on the job") is not a legitimate response in that context.
Please don't make up generalizations about HN for rhetorical purposes. There's no "usual HN moral". It's a large community.
The thread doesn't seem to me to fit your description, but even if it did, the OP asked specifically for helping about keeping his skills up. That's a perfectly legitimate question, and no one deserves to be slurred as a "workaholic" for caring about it or sharing their approach.
Questions about family are deeply emotional and tug on all our ideas about who we are. HN's civility rule requires us to respect each other's differences and not resort to blame or self-righteousness.