As for myself, I tend to not call out the positive parts of something, because that's sort of implicit. I would not bother to point out that the file reading code is wrong if the whole thing was broken.
I admit I'm probably incorrect here, but I notice people try this "say something positive" and it really comes off wrong. Or maybe I don't notice when they do it well.
"Sweet! Uh...that run time is pretty terrible though. Don't worry, let's see what's up with that. (Twenty seconds later:) Ohhhhhhhhh, ha, ok, check this out."
The novice coder knows they suck. They're not really worried about that because, well, they're still here. What they are worried about is that you'll write them off. So don't.
Remember: knowing a bias exists doesn't make it go away, at all.
In my experience, the sort of person who professes a love of unvarnished communication is someone heavily into sending it - the same people reliably hit the roof whenever they receive it.
Public relations is 50% of the job, even if you're bad at public relations. There are no quick hacks to make that go away, 'cos if there were then everyone would already be using them.
I have to admit though, it took many years and a few courses in psychology until I finally could admit to myself and my surroundings that I actually need positive reinforcement, that negative reinforcement, even if true and relevant, could even be detrimental to my performance.
I do agree on the importance of not just "say something positive", it has to be real, most people have probably filled their quota of obviously false/exaggerated complements in preschool. I myself struggle with finding the right balance between sounding patronizing and being overly critical.
And it's not really self confidence[1]. It's more of an extension of principles of coding. Anyone can write a system that does X. But doing X when things go well, and doing it in the face of errors, edge cases, and other faults - that's what it's all about. For me, anyways, when I'm writing code "as an engineer". So I don't find it particularly notable that something works. Of course it " works ", or you wouldn't be telling or showing me in the first place! Likewise if I ask for a review and your only comment is " file buffer is too small " I'm gonna guess the rest is alright else you wouldn't bother pointing out smaller things. If I'm unsure about something, I'll ask about it explicitly.
Outside of a feedback system like a code review, it is important to let people know you appreciate their work. And it's to my detriment that I don't let people know, honestly, when I appreciate them. But that's separate from mixing it in with criticism.
1: I've low confidence in my self confidence. On one hand I know I have a fairly good error rate and I'm objectively better than a lot of other developers. Yet, especially here on HN, I can plainly see I'm nothing special. But this doesn't really assure me that any particular piece of my work is good.
> I gotta wonder, do you actually have such confidence yourself that you assume that everything other people _does not_ comment was good? If so congratulations! A suggestion though, on how you could improve the confidence in people like me - who aren't sure everything not mentioned is good - would be to actually point out the positive parts even if you don't feel that it is necessary.
If you learn another language (a human language), and try to practice it with native speakers, you'll quickly notice that they never comment on your correct grammar. (It's not exactly common for people to comment on incorrect grammar either, but it can happen.) The only way to learn that your phrasing was correct is to ask outright, or observe someone producing an exact analogue of your sentence. This is a source of great aggravation to me, but things couldn't reasonably be any other way -- most of the correct stuff people say is stuff that they already knew was correct.
"The other thing about it is: Comedy comes from a good or a bad place. And I think that the funniest people always comes from a good place. Two people can say the same thing, and one person can be so nasty and vitriolic -- and therefore not funny. And the other can be, you know, a celebration. You know, you can be in on the joke."
--Ricky Gervais
http://www.howardschatz.com/film.php?ID=3814
Corny as it might sound -- I think brutal honesty is more constructive when it comes from a place of love. I'm not sure what the practical take-away from that is. Maybe build trust first, and then be direct? Or be honest, but avoid being mean?
OTOH I think everyone deserves/needs a good bit of BOFH bootcamp to slap them into reality before they are let lose writing code that talks to the Internet... ;-)