> How is a yes/no question aggressive?

Have you stopped beating your wife?

More relevantly, when the question is asked genuinely then - as you say - it's expressing an openness to learn.

Sometimes it is asked rhetorically, dripping with sarcasm and derision. In that case, it is clearly not furthering our interest in productive, good-faith discussions.

Far more often, it falls somewhere between those two and - especially in text - is often ambiguous as to which was intended. While we should exercise charity and hope our conversational partners do likewise, it makes sense to understand when some phrases might be misconstrued and perhaps to edit accordingly.

If you're going to read emotional content into that "Am I missing something?", I think sarcasm and derision are not the most plausible options. In this case, it seems like incredulity is the more likely and appropriate reaction: because it seemed like the person asking the question was putting a lot more thought and effort into the discussion than the Microsoft developers who were not willing to seriously reconsider their off-the-cuff assumptions.

Oh, I didn't mean that sarcasm and derision is how the Microsoft developers interpreted the phrase. I was speaking to the notion that the question was necessarily innocent and could only be interpreted thusly.

I would say that incredulity falls within the range between "completely inoffensive" and "outright hostile", and very much toward the former side of the scale. It can be hard to distinguish from feigned incredulity, which (while still far from "sarcastic and derisive") makes its way toward the other side somewhat.

"Feigned incredulity" can be every bit as caustic as outright hostility.

It's all a matter of perception and context, of course. And though you say there's only one way to interpret it, even you describe it as a continuum.

Sadly, this is all just a sad missed opportunity.

MS could have been less defensive and more open to possible solutions. The genius programmer could have slowed his roll a bit and could have been more collaborative.

I do get the sense that the "feel" in his writing eventually becomes more like "what are you guys smoking, this should be simple!"

It's not just "Am I missing something?"

It's:

"Am I missing something? Why is all this stuff with "runs of characters" happening at all? Why would you ever need to separate the background from the foreground for performance reasons? It really seems like most of the code in the parser/renderer part of the terminal is unnecessary and just slows things down. What this code needs to do is extremely simple and it seems like it has been massively overcomplicated."

Perhaps frustrated that they don't really seem to be on the same technical page?

I tend to think these things can go both ways. I feel pointing out someone's frustration in writing tends to make things worse. Personally I would just ignore it in this case.