The problem with online forums! In real life you can check if the person wants advice: do a "meta" offer of advice and back off if they don't want it. But on a public forum you need to put it out there. If HN had a spoiler feature that might help as you could make the advice shown on click.

I noticed this too. I think that as a fellow advice-giver problem-fixer, I actually welcome unsolicited advice if it's useful. That's basically why I give it - since I'd like to get it. So the friend probably realised that.

The difference, as I see it, is between giving a general advice and giving advice as a response to someone venting about something. There is no problem with telling, "I have learned that X", or "in my experience X is a good thing to do when Y". The problem is when you answer with, "you should do X" when someone tell you about a problem they have without asking for help with solving the problem.

It is even a difference between me saying something like: "The way this work in javascript sucks", which clearly is venting. And: "the way this work in javascript is so confusing, can you help me understand it?" Someone writing a blog-post about how this work is of course also advice, but not as a direct answer to someone venting about it.

Meta, I know the sentence structure wasn't the best, but I don't want help with improving it right now