@iab
I take all of your points and don’t want to imply in any way that you are wrong.
I guess I was just a bit surprised by the harshness of your evaluation because when you look at student projects in general you usually get stuff way below this quality and I am pretty sure none of us can claim that our student projects were all bloody brilliant. At least mine weren’t, especially with hindsight 
. But you are probably right, it isn’t a healthy approach to praise the one-eyed king in the land of the blind.