In the 2010-2020 era, readers of Hacker News used to know how to read Haskell and had strong opinions (pro and con) of it.

That era is now over.

The problem is that this is not only about Haskell's fundamentals. It's about them being extended with backpack, an extension that very few people use.

And honestly, I don't see the point there either. I know that backpack is meant to solve some problem everybody has, but I haven't been able to fully understand what that problem is. Specifically on this article, I don't see the gain over using a type class.

There are still dozens of us!

Maybe in 2010, but you have an idealized view of 2020 HN.