As usual, one of my favorite books The Pragmatic Programmer has some smart words to say about this. Check out "The Cat Ate My Source Code" in Chapter 1, which provides the tip: "Provide Options, Don't Make Lame Excuses." (There's also a funny anecdote elsewhere in the book about a programmer becoming convinced that the OS function select must be broken, because his code, of course, worked perfectly.)

I find it important to remember from time to time that my job involves building software for people, and if person after person doesn't understand what I'm doing or what I've produced then the problem is more likely to be with me, not everyone else.

Chris

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