It's a show of thanks for taking the trouble to give a solid answer backed by facts. Just as bad memes are publicly swatted down, good work (even small) should be praised to set an example for others.

If actual facts are that rare in software engineering, then that's one hell of a "code smell". It really wasn't hard to get.

Facts are pretty common in (good) software engineering, but they're rare in Internet discussion. Hence, solid facts in Internet discussion tend to rack up points.

I upvoted due to sloccount. I didn't know such a tool existed.

Umm..13 people found it insightful/interesting? I don't know..

I can think of plenty of comments that were /actually/ insightful, though. This feels like, "oh, wow, you know how to use science! +1". sad.

It's not sad at all. HN is, for me at least, primarily a place for learning. I scan comments for people speaking of facts and first-hand experience, or links to similar things.

You provided some hard data, and some people who appreciated it pressed the up arrow. It's nothing more than that, and certainly not sad.

Fair enough. I wish it was less rare though.

I don't think the upvotes were intended as a positive judgment of you as a person, but rather as a positive judgment of the value of your comment. A sort of thank-you for doing the legwork so that the rest of us can simply glance at your comment instead of downloading nginx source and running sloccount ourselves.