There's plenty of legitimate reasons to give brusque, dismissive answers. It's tough to distinguish between someone dismissing an idea because he sees the inev

There's plenty of legitimate reasons to give brusque, dismissive answers. It's tough to distinguish between someone dismissing an idea because he sees the inevitable problems that make it unworkable, and someone dismissing an idea that falls outside his comfort zone. It's tough to distinguish between someone giving an abrupt answer because her time is too valuable to spend on a detailed one, and someone giving an abrupt answer because she doesn't have the understanding to formulate an actual rebuttal. And of course it's impossible to tell any of the above from a nice guy having a shitty day. There's a lot of gripe about our shitty community, and I often wonder whether the griping is just a byproduct of having so many conversations in permanently archived public fora, or whether there really is some force at work that makes impolite people choose programming or makes programmers impolite.