I’d like to find a better way to phrase "why aren’t you . . . " questions. It carries an accusatory tone in text, even if you don’t intend that. The answer is almost invariably going to be either “I didn’t know it existed” or “because reason X”. Neither case justifies the accusatory tone. Maybe if the “I didn’t know it existed” answer was something so basic that they really should have known it existed, but probably not even then.
My preferred variation of this is to make it an open question that leaves them in the position of authority, and assumes that they made a deliberate decision.
For example, instead of “Why aren’t you using StandardLib that does 90% of this?”, I would try “Could this be achieved with StandardLib? Seems like it would cover 90% of this”.
Mostly, yes.
I’d like to find a better way to phrase "why aren’t you . . . " questions. It carries an accusatory tone in text, even if you don’t intend that. The answer is almost invariably going to be either “I didn’t know it existed” or “because reason X”. Neither case justifies the accusatory tone. Maybe if the “I didn’t know it existed” answer was something so basic that they really should have known it existed, but probably not even then.
My preferred variation of this is to make it an open question that leaves them in the position of authority, and assumes that they made a deliberate decision.
For example, instead of “Why aren’t you using StandardLib that does 90% of this?”, I would try “Could this be achieved with StandardLib? Seems like it would cover 90% of this”.