...and I closed the page. No thanks, I'm not filling in yet another form just to have a look at a tool, that method was over and done with in the 90's as far as I'm concerned.
Yes, it's much better to wait until a product is actually out there for people to try, before discussing it on HN.
No need for a swipe though! We don't want a culture of dismissiveness in response to people's work, so please keep that kind of thing out of your comments.
Well, I disagree on the last part since I consider it of value to signal to those running these companies that this type of marketing is over and done with. That is no "a swipe", it is a clear signal of intent: if you want to reach your target group you should find a different marketing strategy. While I understand this product is not meant to be free software it does need to compete in a market where free alternatives exist - nay, abound - so they have to find a way to convince potential customers how their products are worth the extra hassle, expenditure and technical risk of investing in a closed-source, proprietary product instead of using one of those free (as in speech) incumbents. This may have worked in the 90's - back when looking for free software often came down to scouring freshmeat.net for potentially useful projects - but it does not work now.
If you want to provide a valuable signal, you need to post a thoughtful comment that doesn't begin with garden-variety snark ("...and I closed the page"), and grouchiness ("I'm not filling in yet another form") and doesn't resort to putdowns ("that method was over and done with in the 90's").
I know it's quite tempting to vent that way in internet comments but it has a degrading effect on the ecosystem and we're trying for something other than that here.
