The point isn't to stroke your teammates' egos. It's to find out why the code is written that way, and to build consensus around a different way of writing it.

The point isn't to stroke your teammates' egos. It's to find out why the code is written that way, and to build consensus around a different way of writing it. Consensus building is a great way to improve the cohesiveness of the team. It lets teammates operate with a set up implicit, shared assumptions, which means they can spend more time on business problems and less time on these kinds of discussions. Generally, lone wolves worsen the team dynamics, because they reduce team cohesion.