[ryandrake]

Remember, you're talking about a community composed largely of software developers, whose livelihoods are built on their ability to find a missing negative sign in 100,000 lines of code. When faced with a large paragraph of text full of complexity and nuance, they're naturally going to find that one word that's wrong and pedantically nit-pick it to death, ignoring the overall point and substance being conveyed.

[synetic]

Thank you for this. I got a laugh out of it. I particularly liked the 100,000 lines of code line.

[sonicshadow]

Lol this even fits with how they do PR reviews and code critiques. When I submit a long PR for review, I know that none of the comments will be substantive or useful. They'll just be meta-critiques about how the headers aren't alphabetized or private members need to come after public. Not about the actual content.

[fargle]

if you can't even clean the basic stuff up to whatever formal or informal coding standard there is, then why should anyone look deeper?

yes, that stuff is unimportant to function. however, if you are getting such comments it means that there is an established standard, and willfully (or sloppily) ignoring it is the problem.

there's also the problem of bike-shedding. but then again if you take the time to be meticulous, there won't be nits to pick and your "helpful" colleagues will have to find something more substantive to pick at.