This article really does nothing to contribute to the discourse on Meteor. At best it would be a reasonable comment, but the content isn't worthy of an article.
The author admits to not having used Meteor (in any real way), but then goes on to defend it for ideological reasons: don't just say something is doomed to failure, because we cannot predict whether it's the next Rails/Node/etc.
Target the framework you're writing about specifically. This article would be just as valid in its logic if you replaced the word Meteor with any underdog library/framework.
Agreed, the article should have been a comment in the previous thread. It seems to be a popular trend on HN: when an author will write something that reaches the front page; moments later you'll see a counter article from the opposing point.
My only issue with this trend, is the low quality posts we see out of it, which are just attempting to steal some thunder so-to-speak. Sometimes you get valuable rebuttals. I just feel like most of the time these counter-point posts could just be comments in the original thread.
This author, go on to quote the thread (albeit plagiarizing) the comments, and what do we have at the end of it. A link to sign up to their Mailing List.
In case people didn't read the blog post before coming to the comment section, the blog is actually defending Meteor as a new framework that might be worth observing.
I feel the same way about OP. Rails is awesome, but Meteor really excels at some things Rails lags behind in. Data binding between database and browser asynchronously which is doable in Rails but it is pain in the ass. Rails simply wasn't made for this kind of app. Times have changed and user are demanding different kind of UX for some apps. I am glad that there are new tools like Meteor in development to fulfill these roles.
I think that much of the reaction in the original post comes from the overly-bombastic headline: "Why meteor will kill Ruby on Rails". If it was sold as "Meteor.js: an exciting new technology for building real-time webapps", I could get behind that, because building real-time websites is currently hard and Meteor makes it easy (easier?). But if you say Meteor is going to kill Rails, you are positioning Rails as Meteor's competition: and when I look at what Rails is used for (quickly building multi-page DB-backed sites with relatively small levels of interactivity), Meteor sucks at that job. There's little reason to use it, and a lot of reason not to.
Hype and blind optimism kills promising new technologies far more often than competitors do. Picking your competitors carefully is important. If you position Meteor against Backbone or Angular, you might have a case, and then we could evaluate based on the technical merits. But if you position it against Rails, they're built for completely different use-cases, and so of course Meteor is going to fall down.
I agree with your overarching sentiment in regards to this matter but I also agree with the with the comment you called out. The software market has significantly reduced friction/barriers to entry, considering this I think age/life-cycle is a valid point of criticism. It doesn't take much to start a project, boast its the next big thing even over mature static html, and then abandon it. I've dealt with using these kinds of projects with some assumption of stability and long-term reliability to be later left disappointed. So I don't think that commenter was simply being a naysayer but instead raises a valid remark on emergin software.
The author admits to not having used Meteor (in any real way), but then goes on to defend it for ideological reasons: don't just say something is doomed to failure, because we cannot predict whether it's the next Rails/Node/etc.
Target the framework you're writing about specifically. This article would be just as valid in its logic if you replaced the word Meteor with any underdog library/framework.