I've generally been growing to the idea that I want to hear all criticism towards my projects, whether it's good or bad, whether it's constructive or not. People suck at communicating, but when they leave criticism, there is always a reason somewhere at the core. It's the old saying that it is apathy, not hate, that is the opposite of love.

So when people are heaping hate on one of my projects, I am now starting to think of it as a failure of messaging on my behalf. If someone says something like "don't reinvent the wheel", it's because I've failed to explain my constraints that prevent me from using existing systems. Maybe one of those constraints is "I don't like that particular system". But whatever it is, it probably needs to be explained if someone is bitching about it.

I might rather people hated my projects than completely ignored them. Getting ignored sucks a lot. Receiving hate tells me people were actually excited by the idea and I was on to something, but that I didn't do something right. I can't figure anything out from getting ignored. It's just blowing in the breeze at that point.