Last week, Derick Bailey announced the FluentNHibernate Contrib project. I have not looked at it but read the post with interest and tucked it away for future reference.

Then, against my better judgment, I looked through the comments. The first one didn’t “disappoint”:

And you're not using Linq To Nh ... why ?

Admittedly, I’m a hopeless optimist. I like the way the world looks through my rose-tinted glasses mostly because it’s been nice to me when I look at it this way.

So I don’t understand the tendency some people have where they seem to relish in knocking someone down a peg or three. All Derick is doing is announcing a project that could potentially help developers. Sir Occo reads this and thinks, “this guy’s wasting his time. And I’m going to tell him about it in the universal language of sarcasm.”

I have no idea if FNH.Contrib is similar to another project. I’m told on Twitter that it is different than Linq to NH. Which is where the danger lies. In all that “holier-than-thou”, there’s a chance that they *aren’t* all that similar. That there are fundamental differences. And more importantly, that Derick has indeed tried Linq to NH and has very good reasons for not using Linq to NH.

But even if he hasn’t, even if the two projects are identical in scope and Derick had no idea of the existence of Linq to NH, what is he supposed to say now? “Thank you for exposing my ignorance, sirocco, and in such a productive fashion, too.” Of course not, the natural reaction is to dig in your heels and start looking for minute differences

To contrast, let’s review comment number three on the same post:

Check out this nhlambdaextensions.googlecode.com/.../NhLambdaExtensions.html

Does something quite similar

Better yet is Neal Blomfield’s comment later on:

Looks a lot like the NH lambda extensions stuff.  Might be worthwhile looking up code.google.com/.../nhlambdaextensions and checkign out broloco.blogspot.com/.../using-lambda-expressions-with.html to see if these guys have some useful things to contribute.

Here, the content is essentially the same (this is similar to another project) but the intent is much different. The Harrisonmeister and Neal bring up alternate projects not to knock the wind out of Derick’s sails, but to see if the two projects can collaborate. Y’know, to make the development community better.

Now, I’ve been known to enjoy the occasional jibe or two and there’s a slight chance some of them may have been in what may be construed by some as a somewhat ironic tone. In more immediate communication methods, like IM or phone or…what’s the other one called, again…oh, yeah!…face-to-face, there are times when I go into a mode as depicted by Dave Foley above. But I try to do so only with a known audience. People that will take it for what it is, good-natured ribbing. Where the :) is implied. But on a blog post for someone I’ve never met in any form, whenever I feel the urge to be snarky, there’s always a voice in the back of my head that tells me to assume the person knows what he or she is doing. So I prefer to choose my comments carefully.

At least for the first one. After that, if you prove my assumption wrong, well, sorry, buddy, you’re fair game.

Kyle the Predatory