Well, the essay goes further than suggesting that people think before speaking and communicate a certain and possibly different way: The essay calls on people to actually think in a certain and possibly different way.

If someone is looking at something and thinking of the positives in personal, general, and permanent ways and thinking of the negatives in impersonal, specific, and temporary ways, then I trust that whatever they choose to say sincerely will work out just fine.

Well its a serious question. There's definitely value in the ideas of Seligman. But it requires skill to apply them in conversation the way Reg suggests without sounding overly deferential and false. Depersonalising criticism where appropriate seems a reasonable approach. Often the personalisation is just a habit that doesn't actually express your intention. Prefacing every criticism with praise could get very old very quickly.

As with a lot of mind hacking (aka self-help), the key is to apply it to oneself, not to others. Turns out people don't like being hacked (get out of my mind!) And to apply it to ones operational thinking, not to how one expresses oneself.

But a discussion of how to apply it to ones own thinking can be a helpful preparatory exercise. In that spirit, and with apologies to the parties involved (the OP is obviously having a joke anyway):

Definition of "optimism": good things are explained as personal, general and permanent; and bad things are explained as impersonal, specific and temporary.

(1) Why is everything written by a Ruby programmer so damn long-winded?

This is describing a bad thing (long-windedness). "Everything" is general. "Ruby programmer" is impersonal wrt to the speaker (it's personal wrt those programmers as a class, but impersonal wrt Reg - but I don't think these are relevant)."Everything" is also permanent, as it includes every time an essay is written, and there is no explicit limit to when such essays will cease being written (not the interminableness of any individual essay). An optimistic explanation for a bad would be impersonal, specific and temporary - this one is impersonal, but it's general and permanent. So it's mostly, but not completely pessimistic. A more pessimistic version is:

- Why am I always so slow at reading everything?"

(2) I'm always interested in the thoughts of other programmers. This article is a bit longer than I have time for at the moment. Would anyone care to summarise?

This is also about something bad ("longer than I have time for"). "I" is personal wrt to the speaker ("I don't have time"; in contrast, the article is only "a bit longer" - the problem is mine, not the articles). "At the moment" is temporary. "This article" is specific. An optimistic explanation for a bad would be impersonal, specific and temporary - this one is personal, specific and temporary, so it is mostly, but not completely optimistic. This definition of optimistic isn't the same as "nice", "kind" or "positive". A more optimistic version is:

- This article is too long to read right now

( The other sentences aren't part of the explanation (and maybe aren't explanations at all?), but anyway, the preface is about a good thing and is personal, general, permanent; the epilogue is an action step about a good thing, and is impersonal, permanent, specific. )