[luispauloml]

I know it's off topic, but I find it interesting how this sentence was so hard for me to understand. I struggled for many seconds but couldn't go beyond "was ever" because it felt like there was some mistake, like a word was missing here or there.

In the first pass, my mind decided that "state" was a verb, and, therefore, there should be a subject appearing before it. But I only found "any", instead of "anybody" or "anyone". Then there is "was ever in be" which, by itself, is a weird construction. It does makes sense in the sentence, because it is "[the] state that Gentoo was ever in" + "be reflected upon". But since I was (unconsciously) dividing the sentence in smaller parts trying to identify the subject, the predicate, the verb, the object, or whatever would make sense for me, cutting the sentence like that only confused me even more. I kept going back and forth trying to imagine which word was missing, and only after pushing through until the quotation, the whole sentence finally made sense.

Although I can't think of any example right now, I know that it is common to use sentences with structure similar to this one, and I see them almost daily, probably multiple times a day. However, as a non-native speaker, this one was an actual struggle, and I feel so good for having overcome it that I am willing comment on it.

For closure, if I was the one writing this sentence, I would probably use the active voice with an indefinite pronoun, which is also probably what my mind was expecting:

    Only on HN would anyone reflect upon any state that Gentoo was ever in as "just worked like a breeze".

And I ask: were there native speakers that also couldn't understand it in a single reading?

[Zambyte]

Native English speaker here. The sentence was definitely missing a word. I read it multiple times before I got it too. Your rewrite was easier to understand.

[mgdlbp]

a garden path sentence, but it parses.

[only on HN] could [any state [that Gentoo was ever in]] be [reflected upon [as "just worked like a breeze"] unironically]_,_ and [I] mean [that] [in a fond, loving way]