Feelings of frustration are often understandable, but the point is that if we are to have a high-quality discourse here, we can't let them determine the comments we post. There are some contexts in which pugilism and intellect go together just fine, but experience has shown that Hacker News is not one of them.

It's particularly harmful when a good writer or established user goes there, because then everybody else does and it's degenerate internet goo for the lot of us.

The old line about heat vs. light comes to mind. We can't have both. Hacker News is about clearing a place for thoughtful conversation, or at least trying to. This is not a subject matter thing, it's a quality thing.