You noted the irony that you're giving us advice about not giving advice. But there's actually a double irony because you're giving advice about not giving advice due to your friend giving you advice about not giving advice.
The problem with online forums! In real life you can check if the person wants advice: do a "meta" offer of advice and back off if they don't want it. But on a public forum you need to put it out there. If HN had a spoiler feature that might help as you could make the advice shown on click.
I noticed this too. I think that as a fellow advice-giver problem-fixer, I actually welcome unsolicited advice if it's useful. That's basically why I give it - since I'd like to get it. So the friend probably realised that.
The difference, as I see it, is between giving a general advice and giving advice as a response to someone venting about something. There is no problem with telling, "I have learned that X", or "in my experience X is a good thing to do when Y". The problem is when you answer with, "you should do X" when someone tell you about a problem they have without asking for help with solving the problem.
It is even a difference between me saying something like: "The way this work in javascript sucks", which clearly is venting. And: "the way this work in javascript is so confusing, can you help me understand it?" Someone writing a blog-post about how this work is of course also advice, but not as a direct answer to someone venting about it.
Meta, I know the sentence structure wasn't the best, but I don't want help with improving it right now
