But this is not about attention by itself; It's about feedback.

At least you learned that your opinions were considered controversial. You made someone move out of their comfort zone and reach out to you, if only to send hatemail. You have impact on other people. That's something.

But those who are writing posts but get no response whatsoever, are stumbling in the dark. Is the topic boring? Is the post not detailed enough? Too long? Too pompous? Is there a spelling error half-way through, so horrible, that no one manages to read the article to the end? Those people will never know.

Of course, you can hone your writing skills by writing for yourself, but without critique from others, it can only get you so far.

You can call this success. I don't. Success is writing great code or educating people. Not provoking bullshit responses.

So like, i wrote an article about learning to code. It was wrong. I was using outdated research.

But none of my critique of it was about that. I had to discover that later. My crituque was that it was stupid, or unfair, or anti-blue-collar, or whatever. I got 0 value, 0 education, 0 fun, and only regret out o the experience. And it was strictly my diligence on the subject that lead to a correction.

What exactly did I get other than harassment for this process? Maybe you feel differently, but honestly? I don't care how folks feel. Either we have a constructive dialogue, or we don't. I don't want non-constructive dialogues. I can find no consolation in the later kind.

You might look at my content history on HN and say, "But you argue with people a lot." I do, because I feel obligated to do so. I do not like it or enjoy it. It is something I have promised to do; not something I want to.