Comment by jghn
6 hours ago
The “why did we do X and not Y?” style of question is a commonly used passive aggressive crutch to tell someone to do Y instead, while attempting to not look mean/harsh. Its the same reason people use “we” in the first place.
You may not be using it this way but because many others are that’s how it’ll typically be interpreted
You call it passive aggressive, I call it "acknowledging that you might know something I don't".
I agree, and why I hate that this has become a thing. I encountered the same thing as the GP which is from where my experience comes. I'd ask "Why did you choose X over Y" as I'm genuinely curious to know what tradeoffs were considered that led them to choose X. Perhaps there's something I don't know. But I also see it get used all the time to mean "you should have done Y".
The "we" stuff is similar. There was a movement several years ago to try to remove blame/harshness from the tone of code reviews, and this is what we got out of it.