Some people (myself included) will not like subscription-based, web app.
You worked 7 months on this project full time on your savings as you mention and you might've squandered any reputational gains from that with just three words and a comma.
Might as well go down in the history of hackernews but a bit negatively. I hope that you take a deeper look at how you respond online.
I have a suggestion but if you feel like you are not sure how to respond to a comment, then don't at the moment rather than typing this for example.
perhaps treat it as a learning exercise on how to answer such questions because if you ever market to anyone, customer or business. It is natural that they will ask such questions and so in a way, it might be beneficial.
Just my 2 cents.
Anecdotally, it takes a lot of patience to answer criticism in a good manner and definitely takes a lot of time to craft a good answer if you do go through that route but in the long term/even in the short term, those are some of the best messages that I have written personally which genuinely make me appreciate myself.
I wish that you can take a deeper reflection into such question as you are most likely going to be asked it quite often and having an good answer early on might be beneficial for your product.
have a nice day.
At that point, don't respond then :/
here's how I would've responded:
"Hey my project targets the niche similar to notion and others who are also web based for the most part and subscription model, reading your comments, you might be better of using non-web products and some of the suggestions in that include Qownnotes and zim. Here is a video in detail which talks about Simple, Non-Commercial, Open Source Notes for example which might help you find a solution for your needs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRpHIa-2XCE"
(Not saying that you needed to refer them to alternatives but as I knew of this video, if I were you, it might've made sense)
Another comment which doesn't talk about any other software but might've worked as well if you wished to respond:
"Hey, at some point, I do understand your take of everything turning into electron and browser-ified and software is taking 1 gigabyte of ram etc. and I understand this sentiment as well but I feel like that there is still an opportunity to make browser based subscription models towards the people who still wish for something convenient within their browser and for example, these can work absolutely great for students with their chromebooks which can have browser apps with genuine ease and targeting a large group of people to gain feedback from to hopefully improve my product even further in the future."
> Web-based and subscription payments describes the majority of software out there today
Yes and people are fed up of that too. I am sure that the alchemist isn't saying no to your product but saying yes to, for example notion. They are saying no to both and they are making their stance clear (as to why) and you are bound to have some people who are on the fence about the same thing (especially if you are launching within something like hackernews)
Edit: These are all thoughts that I can think of not even having launched anything from this product but I have sure tried my bunch of editors. I am definitely certain within your ability to write such messages as well and if you aren't, then that's completely fine too and I recommend in that case to not reply back for example.