To re-purpose a popular quote: everything after the "just" is BS. It's not that there are never valid uses, but 99% of uses that I see tend toward careless and

To re-purpose a popular quote: everything after the "just" is BS. It's not that there are never valid uses, but 99% of uses that I see tend toward careless and condescending. Sometimes they're part of an "adversarial learning" process in which the person making the suggestion knows it's probably wrong but uses it as a way to be educated without having to ask for it. You'll recognize this one because they'll "just" over and over and over. Other times "just" is an expression of the person's own frustration with the constraints of the problem or the pace of progress, which isn't really helpful either. Often, as tbray points out, it's a way to make light of others' struggles. Only rarely is it constructive, most often as a way to snap someone out of "analysis paralysis" or other kinds of mental looping - and even then there are better alternatives. And don't get me started on "should" or we'll be here all day. ;)