It's easy to shut them out. To other them as an outsider whose feedback isn't worth considering. To validate ourselves.

But that's not always the best course of action.

Sometimes it is! Sometimes people are just negative, or they have totally incompatible perspectives on the thing, or they're making overly broad and incorrect assumptions.

But often there's some truth there, and- being heavily invested in this thing- we very frequently miss the problem they're experiencing or the perspective they have.

This plays out in every creative / productive community: people work hard on something, and someone new complains about it. The old guard staunchly defend it without any consideration for the new perspective, and the project never improves.

Game isnt fun? You just dont understand the systems or our creative vision, git gud.

Framework is difficult to work with? Just read the code examples (docs if you're lucky) / nuh-uh / works fine for me get over it

Programming language is hard to get into and easy to misuse to the point where governments are recommending future government works avoid using it? Git gud (but in more programmer snobbery terms)

Like. This mindset is inherently bad for all of us, and it is 1000% easy to fall into. Change is hard, breaking away from the familiar is rough, being wrong in our initial judgement is uncomfortable to admit.

INB4: I'm not saying there's never reason to push against change. There are logistical and design intent challenges. BUT it's worth occasionally reevaluating direction to see if priorities might be worth shifting based on reasonable feedback.