Your comment ought to be flagged, but for some reason cannot be done by me. You have gone too far. Not only are you wrong, you are being obnoxious, rude and cowardly. I guarantee that you wouldn't dare speak like that to anyone you were in front of. Just another cowardly nerd hiding behind a screen.
You're right that what that user did was not ok. Unfortunately comments like this one just compound the problem. When you can't flag a comment, someone else probably will. Or you can email us at hn@ycombinator.com. But please resist getting into a personal spat.
Everyone in this thread was at fault. You can't post things like "Did it blow your mind when you understood something for a change" here. HN's rules hold regardless of how provocative someone else may have been.
We all lose it on the internet sometimes. On HN the thing to do is recognize that you broke the rules, stop blaming the other person for it, and move on.
The I-merely defense ("I was merely X-ing, but they were Y-ing") doesn't work. You can, and people do, justify anything that way.
Please re-read my comments on this thread and others on this article you will find that I've actually been very patiently trying to explain some simple concepts -- to someone that repeatedly swore, accused me of criminal activity, wilfully misinterpreted me and raged at me. I said nothing that I would not have said IRL even when I did eventually descend to sarcasm in respond to the personal attacks.
