As the Show HN guidelines say: "When something isn't good, you needn't pretend that it is." But you also needn't trample over someone's freshly planted garden.
Helpful criticism is fine. Asking a question is fine (a real question, not a gotcha one designed to make someone look bad); for example, one could ask "what do you mean when you say this is a new kind of spreadsheet?" Pointing out similarities to other work is fine. All we want to avoid is being dismissive. Since the line isn't obvious (especially to a million readers), simply err on the side of not being.
On HN, new work doesn't need to be useful, just alive. One can't always predict what will turn out to be useful anyhow.
Everybody showing new work deserves a minimal baseline of respect here. If you know more and have done more than someone else has, that's great. That's an opportunity to teach and to share, not put them down.
Edit: since "new kind of spreadsheet" is arguably a bit baity we've changed to the HTML doc title.
I am uncomfortable with the line you're taking here. The sentence "javascript makes it better amirite" was a bit juvenile, but otherwise the comment was perfectly valid. We do not want to be forced to be positive about things which have serious flaws; this sort of kumbaya HN thought police makes this seem more like some sort of Christian summer camp than an environment for rational discussion.
Nobody wants to be "forced to be positive", including us. If you try to find a different interpretation of what I wrote, I don't think you'll find it very hard.
Helpful criticism is fine. Asking a question is fine (a real question, not a gotcha one designed to make someone look bad); for example, one could ask "what do you mean when you say this is a new kind of spreadsheet?" Pointing out similarities to other work is fine. All we want to avoid is being dismissive. Since the line isn't obvious (especially to a million readers), simply err on the side of not being.
On HN, new work doesn't need to be useful, just alive. One can't always predict what will turn out to be useful anyhow.
Everybody showing new work deserves a minimal baseline of respect here. If you know more and have done more than someone else has, that's great. That's an opportunity to teach and to share, not put them down.
Edit: since "new kind of spreadsheet" is arguably a bit baity we've changed to the HTML doc title.