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.. Or at least, me and most of the programmers I know. It’s quite obvious really, since people are basically hardheaded (not hard as in “could break a stone”, but stubborn, or whatever you call it), when they turn into programmers, the base multiplier for this value seems to go up for reason unknown. (at least that’s what I observe. This might be true for other professions as well, especially ones that requre less social interaction cmiiw, maybe musicians and designers)

Tell us bad stuff about our codes/programs/applications/art pieces. If you are one of these :

1. someone we don’t know
2. newbies / beginners
3. 3. or worse, that kind of person who speaks with clever jargons to pretend to others that they have a high level of ’skillz’.
4. someone annoying (let’s hope that you are not)

What’s that clever jargons on point 3 ? Well, you’ll recognize those jargons when you encountered one, it’s the words that are difficult/cool/hi-tech/impactful/melting your brain when you heard them, similar to those used in political speeches, except that, well, it’s “cleverer”. Non-programmers like them, because they are cool and have some kind of dark mysterious aura coating them, but to you, they are ambiguous, misdirecting, or simply useless. (don’t ask for examples, though)

Back to the topic. Well, what if you are in one of those 4 points I mentioned ? If we don’t already ignore you, we’ll most probably retaliate. We’ll pin your words and try to counter them. We’ll argument. If we feel that you are mistaken in some points (you must be!!), we’ll correct those.

If you are point 1 or 2 (see above), we’ll listen to your reason (maybe pessimistically), because we know that we could be wrong sometimes, or in case 1, you might have a better knowledge and therefore might have some good points we missed or didn’t know before. In case 3, we’ll throw you back more tricky words (see if you actually know the stuff you’re saying). In case 4, well, we’ll spend more of our energy to avoid you rather than coming up with an argument.

On the contrary, when a programmer accepts every remarks/comments/improvement suggestions/bad stuff with downright-approval, nods, or open-arms, no argument included, the reason is probably one of these:

1. You got an absolutely good point
2. He/she respects you, or sees you as a preson with better skill than him/her
3. He/she doesn’t have a single clue at what’s happening in his/her work, or how it actually do something, and doesn’t want to admit that.
4. He/she wants something from you.
5. He/she has something to be done and wants you to go away quickly. 
6. It’s the best way to avoid talking more to somebody annoying.

Then, what is the best way to deal with that hardheaded-ness of mine some programmer you know ? You might already know these stuff, as most of them are common sense, really.

1. Be specific, give as many details as you can, but keep them simple, focus on one thing at a time. “The website is too difficult ! ” is not a very useful information. 
2. Don’t sugarcoat your words with jargons just so that they sounds cool, only use them if you REALLY knew what it is and when it’s appropriate. You’d embarass yourself if you can’t explain what you’ve just said.  Even if you are a programmer, you may not know what those terms really mean. Unit Testing ? Abstraction layer ? Semantic ? What about ‘modules’, ‘frameworks’, ‘memory leaks’, or even ‘database’ ? “What the hell, these are common terms, right ? ” You’d be suprised.
3. Don’t start your sentence a with an accusation. Unless you really know what is happening, pretend that you don’t know nothing. Something like, “Your website has bugs in it, when I try to access, it says ‘Server not found’, and now my Yahoo Messenger doesn’t work too”.  Yeah, right.