@drq thing is, I like "comment trees" specifically. I even wrote an article about the specific UI that I like: https://habr.com/ru/articles/730172/
A (linear) feed is a 100% not a good default, I agree with you on that. It's kinda fine for "top-level posts", but not for replies.
@iliazeus @drq another idea, how comment tree may be implemented in UX: make it color-highlighted like in BlueJ IDE:
https://www.pvsm.ru/images/2014/08/20/BlueJ-java-IDE-dlya-novichkov-5.png
And i think, we very missing such block hightlighting feature in many IDEs