Personally I don't see anything wrong with suggesting to add a few hints, but the basis of that suggestion in this case was that "there's a lot more of us who could probably get the joke" with the hints. If making it approachable to more people is inherently a good thing, the logical conclusion is to make it approachable to everyone.
With code like this, the readability obviously isn't a high priority consideration and sometimes the exact opposite of the goal, with the impenetrability sometimes being part of its charm. This is Hacker News after all, and if your reaction to of a piece of code that describes itself as "an exercise in minimalism" is to leave a snarky comment about the lack of documentation, you should probably check your news elsewhere.
If you have any interest in the subject, the initial comment "just enough features to allow self-compilation and a bit more" should give the purpose of the code away. If not, it ought to have been a clear sign of dragons.
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