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.
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.
