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Yeah I remember being a junior and feeling like blunt comments were kind of rude. So I make an effort to be nicer to new developers - sometimes simply adding “what do you think?”/“do you agree?” is enough to make those command style sentences sound much less blunt, and also encourages them to ask questions instead of blindly following my suggestion if they don’t fully understand it.



To me those questions could come off as condescending. I say could because I wouldn’t think that’s your intent, but the tone is there.


That depends entirely on whether you add the question as a formality or if you are genuinely interested in why the other person might disagree.


To me ’…don’t you agree?’ is the sort of rhetoric that parents use to make their kids internalise their beliefs.

If someone disagrees I expect them to speak up, if they’re not so inclined I’m interested to know why, so we can address/resolve that and move on.


The comment says "do you agree?", not "don't you agree?". I agree that the latter sounds condescending, but the former sounds reasonable to me.




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