this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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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".
If you have seniority and they are a junior, some juniors do respond well to a senior having more knowledge about the codebase. With them, it can be beneficial to use a tone like "We have library X that seems like it could do a lot of the functionality here, unless you already took a look?" I know it's like 90% of the same but I know people who will just be shellshocked and just blindly say "yes" to any question you ask them, and I don't want a blind "yes" I wanna know the truth :) it also lets then explain why they didn't use it if they have a legit reason because hey, maybe I'm the one who needs to be caught up