I think it's mostly humor. Bugsmithing and interoperability impedance of this form was almost Microsoft's raison d'etre in the 90's. Stuff that was simple and obvious everywhere else just didn't work on windows, even though the fix would be 100% trivial and probably result in better standards compliance. And MS liked it that way.
So sure, this is good. It doesn't exactly undo all those decades of grief. So we're laughing grimly at the "progress".
Because PC's were maybe only 60% of the actual software development market and there were a lot of us hackers whose "parochial" needs involved getting stuff to work across both platforms. Were you actually there?
I mean, Notepad is a silly thing, sure. But the crazy spec incompatibilities between MSVC and the C9x and C++03 standards were a huge source of grief for me personally. And the mess caused by Microsoft's "Java" implementation was straight up evil.
To be fair, U*nix editors in the 90's had problems with line endings other than strictly newline. Even agnostic editors like Emacs had problems. It was a three-way mutually cultivated impedance.
What is "bugsmithing" - did you just make this word up?
(I googled "define bugsmithing" without quotes, and this HN thread I'm typing in was the top result behind only an unrelated site called the bugsmith, an exterminator. I didn't see any relevant hits.)
"Smithing" in English refers to making something, in the sense of a blacksmith forging iron. So in this context "bugsmithing" refers to making bugs -- deliberately (more or less) doing things differently or incorrectly so as to increase the impedance required to do work on less popular platforms. Microsoft was famous for this.
As far as I understand, it's a site criticizing HN, by summarizing in a satirical tone the discussion on some of the top stories.
The about page:
About this webshit
[...]
Hacker News is an echo chamber focusing on computer posturing and self-aggrandizement. It is run by Paul Graham's investment fund and sociopath incubator, Y Combinator.
In general, content that can be submitted is defined as "anything that gratifies one's ineffectual curiosity".
So sure, this is good. It doesn't exactly undo all those decades of grief. So we're laughing grimly at the "progress".