[kjkjadksj]

Seems like that would invite armchair engineering like you seen in HN comments. “Couldn’t you just do the easy and obvious thing?” The answer is probably a long no and the creator had your thought already before realizing the true scope of the work.

[ar_lan]

It's definitely double-edged. The main thing I've learned regarding this is to clearly document this answer somewhere, very early on.

I recently learned this because I was asked this precise question and basically had to drudge up all my two-quarters-ago research that was the answer to this question. My answer to their question was "yes we could do the easy thing, but..." and everything trailing the "but" is a very long string of small points that add up to something that tipped the scale (at least in my and several other folks opinions). But without that laid clearly out they thought I was just over-engineering for the sake of job security or something like that.

[pixl97]

Make sure people know why Chesterton's fence was put up.

Letting people know why is two fold. Not only does it keep them from relearning the 1000 edge cases you discovered in the school of hard knocks, sometimes technology changes and something that was a hard limit no longer is.

[8note]

That's great stuff to include in your design doc, at least on an appendix

[delusional]

I find this pretty easy to deal with. You just don't engage with that question. Make it clear to the people you are discussion it with what kind of things you want input on (architecture, design, product market fit), and make it very clear when you consider their input out of that scope. People will very quickly learn what sort of comments you care about.

This form on "collective design" usually uses a confrontational form of rhetoric, but the exercise is very much collaborative.

[lizard]

Is that so bad?

Ideally, if as others have suggested, you've already worked through that question and documented it, you can just refer to that documentation amd move along.

If you haven't documented it, it's a good reminder others may have the same question and answering it will either lead the to the same conclusion or other questions you did not think of.

[reactordev]

Without proper management, you're correct. It would. I would retort, never start a sentence with a negative. Find something you do agree upon, make comments about the stuff that you do like, before going into the details of what you don't. This way it's clear where those boundaries are and in what context the disagreed design would need changing, if any. This also prevents brilliant jerks from completely destroying the confidence of others to even present designs to the group. Yes, it's a little showy, using more words than are necessary, but it keeps the human aspect of agreement and cooperation in-tact.

[Jensson]

> I would retort, never start a sentence with a negative.

"Could you do the easy and obvious thing?" means the same thing, I don't see how it makes a difference.

[ozim]

I believe parent was more into “could you do xyz?” Where xyz is easy and obvious thing, but no one would explicitly phrase it exactly like “could you do easy and obvious thing?”.

This way proposing xyz as a solution is positive not a negative.

[reactordev]

Easy and obvious are subjective.