That seems overly harsh. It's a cool utility, and the author even shows it being used with pipes in numerous ways. I'm just arguing that including non-essential features is a trade-off. Often it's just complexity for ease of use, but I think this one has some possible security implications, and what you get for that may not be worthwhile.
Harsh because it became negative about the person, rather than the tool. Being immediately negative and critical of the tool is already quite harsh in the real world, but engineers (and especially HN) have a tendency to do this and find it normal. I don't know why, but that horse seems out of the barn. But a glib dismissal of an emotional being's knowledge after they make themselves vulnerable is just that: harsh.
I appreciate your relentless cutting through the bullshit and fluff attitude. I get it, and I do see the value: say it like it is, don't sugar coat it. But in this case, you cut right down to and through a person's flesh. It's different when you talk about established culture or faceless companies, from when you talk about a human being who is literally reading this right now.
Edit: just to add, it seems to me, your attitude is precisely what would make you a good engineer. Bam, here's the problem, fix this, the system is better. It wasn't intended as personal, I don't think. But yeah, at the end of the day, we're all vulnerable emotional beings who crave love and affection. We can be honest and clear, and still a little supportive and loving at the same time :)
> Please... Do you really think that upon reading my comment the author going to assume the foetal position and cry?
I'm not sure about the GP here, but my original reply was not because I thought you were hurting someone's feeling, but because ultimately it seemed inaccurate. I looked through the project README before commenting, and what was obvious is that the author does know how to use the command line, so I tried to keep my comments relevant to the point.
The README contains aliases, redirection (both truncating and appending), multiple pipes within a single command line, and ultimately, within a reproduction of the output of the --help flag an example of piping curl to this command.
Ultimately I found your original comment inaccurate. I find comments that are style over substance, especially when that style is used to denigrate an individual, rarely useful.
> Children in my school used to use the phrase "that's harsh!" upon certain remarks from other children. And do you know which part cut the deepest? It was the "that's harsh". Why? Because it is a double attack on me. It both acknowledges that was said is true and adds that I am too weak to handle the attack myself.
Saying "That's harsh!" doesn't itself imply accuracy to the statement. Just the opposite, in fact, since it's an acknowledgement that the parson went a too far. The delivery, on the other hand, can change the meaning entirely, and I think that's what you are referring too.
That said, I think you're mistaken to equate my use of it to this past experience of yours. I obviously wasn't saying it in a way like "Ha, sick burn!", but instead "I think you've overstepped in a way that hurts your point, if your point is valid at all".
> Are you projecting your insecurities on the author?
It's interesting that you included this, as I think you're perhaps projecting some insecurities from your own past onto some of the statements being used here. At a minimum, your own words have brought that possibility into the discussion.
I can definitely see why you might think that, but I don't think it's fair to bring my presumed lack of understanding of the command line up as a reason; especially when some of the documentation[0] is a bit of a pipe party.
I've addressed this a little in another comment already[1], but the truth is that the HTTP client functionality only really exists for the sake of a few users that I heard from directly. curl being a default on Windows now[2] may be enough that this feature can be removed. Perhaps the feature should never have existed, but now that it does it's difficult to justify removing it - you never know whose workflow you might break[3].
Fair enough. Might be worth changing the docs to use curl and adding that the built in simple HTTP client is a convenience that exists for limited platforms.
