It is ok to be new and inexperienced with a framework/programming language/whatever. Everyone of us is from time to time in such a “newbie phase”. And this means you will ask “stupid” questions (of course after you have done your “homework”, i.e. searching on the internet, reading the documentation). It’s part of the learning process. And it’s nothing you have to apologize for.

Sure, if you have a project you are free to define your own rules, and you can define a rule as shown above. However, such a rule has its price: you are annoying exactly those people who want to help you to make a better product…

I think the most important point is to ask yourself whether it is really an attack. Most often, it is not an attack but feedback (it helps to take some time to think about what was said). Whether something said is seen as feedback or an attack depends on three factors :

• me — what is for me acceptable that someone else says to me?
• the other person — who said it?
• the context — in which context was it said?

So depending on those factors the same comment can be seen as feedback or an attack. If I see something as feedback, then the other person will (usually) get a normal answer. But if I see it as an attack, then I will switch (probably unconsciously) to a defensive mode and try to defend myself. You want to show the other person that you are stronger/better/smarter/whatever and that it is a bad idea to attack you and he should go away. That’s the goal.

To accomplish this goal, everyone uses his own strategies. Some of them are:

• Ignore the attack and do nothing
• Say you don’t accept such an attack and he should go away
• Use the judo principle, i.e. analyze what the other said to attack you and use it against him
• Surprise the other with an answer he wouldn’t expect, e.g. by thanking him
• Start an attack, too

I think there is no strategy for every situation, in one situation you may have to use strategy A, whereas in another situation strategy B is more suitable, and so on. This may sound easy, but in such a situation it is difficult to keep cool and so you may act irrationally… So, be warned!

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, such attacks are very seldom. Still, it is always good to be prepared ;-)

Personally, I don’t trust CakePHP, because a) tests are missing, and b) some existing tests fail (at the moment I get 11 failures and 3 exceptions with rev. 5568). But as I trust my own tests it doesn’t matter much whether the underlying framework is trustworthy or not…

It caused some reactions behind the scenes in the form of: “How could you write such a comment as a CakePHP contributor?! It puts CakePHP and the team in a bad light!”

Sure, being affiliated with a certain group comes with some responsibilities and implies you have to be more careful in what you say in public. Most of the time it is obvious whether you can say something or not. But in some cases like the comment above it is more difficult. Should you say what you think and indirectly criticize people in the group, or not? Is it even criticizing if you mention some (negative?) facts everyone else can easily verify? As you see, it is a tightrope walk… for some it is ok to write such a comment whereas others would never write such a comment.

If a comment takes this inner hurdle and gets effectively written, you loose the control about it. You don’t have any control about how the readers will interpret it. Everyone interprets it in the way he wants. Some see it negative, others neutral, and the last ones interpret it in a positive way. Even though everyone reads the same, the message they get can be completely different. For the comment above the messages could be:

“A guy bitching about missing and failing tests” (negative)

“A guy who writes his own tests because some tests in CakePHP are missing resp. failing” (neutral)

“A guy who inspires me to write my own tests” (positive)

Can you do something against that? I doubt it. You simply have to live with it (and its potential consequences).

To sum up, I can say you have to say what is ok for you to say, and to accept that not everyone will get the same message of what you are saying.