At the risk of continuing this meta discussion, I would have flagged that comment too, but not for any disagreement about whether JavaScript should be avoided.

At the risk of continuing this meta discussion, I would have flagged that comment too, but not for any disagreement about whether JavaScript should be avoided. Many of us have family members fighting cancer, and there are cancer patients and survivors reading HN. I don't think a casual statement equating that terrible disease with a mere programming language is appropriate here or in any public forum. By way of contrast, I would have upvoted a comment like this: I avoid JavaScript whenever I can. I feel safer that way. I use FooBlock Organic to selectively whitelist JavaScript for sites that need it and that I trust. I recognize the irony of using a browser extension which is itself written in JavaScript, but it's open source and I've reviewed the source code carefully. I even contributed some patches to make it easier to use.