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That's not what the XY problem is. The XY problem is asking for Y because you think it's the only way to solve your actual problem X. It's more of a lack of per
by chowells 4y ago
That's not what the XY problem is. The XY problem is asking for Y because you think it's the only way to solve your actual problem X. It's more of a lack of perspective than a lack of education. You tunnel-vision on what you think the solution will be, and when you go looking for help you you ask only about Y, instead of providing the larger context of X.
You can't have an XY problem unless you're trying to solve problem X. It's not a lack of education, it's a lack of perspective on what your real goal is.
- evandale 4y agoIf you don't know you're trying to solve for X you will get the XY problem though - that's ignorance or lack of education. The last 3 letters is a perfect example. If you've only been exposed to 3 letter extensions and think that extension == 3 letters because you've never seen anything else it might not occur to you to ask how to get a file's extension. If you don't know the thing after the . is called an extension and you're looking at an ls of a directory where every file has 3 character extensions it won't occur to you to ask how to get the extension of a file. Yelling at a person who doesn't ask how to solve X when they don't even know that they should have asked X isn't helpful to anyone.
- chowells 4y agoWhether you know it's called an extension or not, you know it's the part of the filename after the dot. That knowledge isn't missing. The perspective to understand it's what you should be asking for is.