Given vc++ you would look for an open source version and land on gcc or clang, right? Or given windows you would check out what alternatives there are and learn a bit about linux, openbsd, and so on. At least that was my assumption. I think it is reasonable.
I mean sure, I can probably find Lazarus if searching for a Delphi IDE. But please explain: what's the advantage? They save a couple of bytes in storage for the forum post, and besides that, what do you get apart from a sense of elitism due to those outside of the ecosystem not getting much from the announcement post? I don't see anything besides gatekeeping.
Fewer people will know the project in the context it's meant to be used. That seems strictly negative. What's the positive?
I thought the upside was pretty obvious, but perhaps there is such an age and culture gap that it has to be said out loud: I'm all for people exercising (and thus, strengthening) their research and patience skills. And complaining about how not every post on HN is a pretty landing page pitching a product is a spit in the face of that. Some communities don't attract people like this and rightly so. I grew up in a RTFM & RTFS culture (and it was awesome!), so perhaps we might never reconcile our differences.
Hmm yes, I will have to trust my well developed strengths to find deliberately hidden information. Well communicated, that is exactly what I wrote and meant. You know, with this exchange of ideas we probably inspired a lot of ten year olds about: searching the other things like that thing you just saw, and clicking more than once.
