Getting better feedback on your work

One thing I learned in art school about feedback is that in matters of taste and emotions everbody giving honest¹ criticism is right. What they are sometimes (often? nearly always?) might not be right about are the suggested ways to fix that.

So if someone criticises the way your code is written, instead of focusing on them and you ("They are criticising me"), you should focus on their feeling and the code ("What in/about the code made them feel that way?").

Then you can still decide whether this is a thing you want to address and which way of addressing fits your project.

To receive good feedback, you have to ask specific questions. So not: "what do you think?", but: "I am not sure about that part being like X, I thought about doing Y, but I think this had its problems as well. What do you think?"

¹: Of course people can give dishonest feedback, e.g. to put themselves into the spotlight or because they dislike you or what you stand for in their mind. In that case the feedback could still be valuable, or it could be useless.

> To receive constructive — and effective — feedback, we simply need to ask for it.

I almost stopped reading right there because it so violently disagrees with my experience.

I'm glad I made it through the article though, as it makes some good points. Ask for different feedback based on what makes sense at this point in time. Manage expectations . Alright.

The thing is, giving good, constructive feedback is hard. I don't think a lot of people are good at it, for various reasons. So no, even if you ask for feedback, chances you'll be getting good feedback are low.

If there's a way make that more likely I haven't found it yet.