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"You keep mentioning XY problem, but you really meant the AB problem, and that answer is ......" That's it in a nutshell. And concur with this de-framing non-a
by pierat 3y ago
"You keep mentioning XY problem, but you really meant the AB problem, and that answer is ......"
That's it in a nutshell. And concur with this de-framing non-answer as one of the leading causes of bad StackOverflow solutions.
- asveikau 3y agoStack overflow started out with a lot of Microsoft ecosystem people, eg. Joel Spolsky. I worked at Microsoft in 2008 and this kind of de-framing was a bit of a corporate cultural obsession there at that time. You'd report a bug internally and PMs would ask you what you were really trying to do ... It was frustrating when you wanted people to just fix their shit. Instead people would universally treat you like you didn't know what you were doing and really meant to ask something else. I saw this trait a lot on SO around the same time.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jameshart 3y agoApparently I was too subtle so let me put a lampshade on it. The replies to the post which said that the XY problem approach is useful in product development, which are talking about XY reframing being a problem on stackoverflow are XY reframing the parent post. They are doing exactly what they decry. The smell of irony is apparently not as thick in the air as I thought it was.
- haswell 3y agoFor what it’s worth, I saw what you did there and appreciated/enjoyed it.