Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm simply trying to point out that there are decisions you can control and decisions you can't. You can control what your life takes a dependency on, and how tightly coupled you are to particular products and services. For different types of products and services, you have more or less control and confidence about the future of those products and services. For software that you own and run on your box, that control…
There's a deep irony in telling people on a site like this not to use the tools that we all put our blood, sweat and tears into every day. If onboarding wasn't such a big deal and something people needed in order to prove the market exists and there's money to be made, we wouldn't see a good portion of the posts here about it and we wouldn't see so many ShowHNs with people asking for advice on how to make it more cle…
I'm certainly not trying to blame users for ignorance. I personally, however, have a strong aversion to coupling myself to tools and services whose future I have low confidence in. What I was trying to impart to mnicole as a consumer was this aversion. The lesson I'd send to the rest of the development community is that if you structure your tool or service in a way that it is not possible for me to either have a low dependency on you or a high confidence in your future, you fail the sniff test.