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The XY Problem (2014)

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Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#21

Post by JdeBP »

Mark-Jason Dominus was the root cause of the "XY" name, inadvertently.

I, Raymond Chen, Charles Cazabon, and Eric S. Raymond didn't use that name at all.

A lot of people foolishly chose to go with "XY", because they thought that what we were saying was silly. I even had bloody foolish people on Stack Exchange complain that I wasn't using the sensible name "XY", when I was one of the people who wrote about this stuff in the first place long before that name appeared. I shouldn't be renaming what was known as the "XY Problem" to silly names, they demanded.

But that was the point that Mark-Jason Dominus and I were making.

Calling it something as mundane as "XY" loses an essential part of the concept, which is that the actual question as posed makes no logical sense and blatantly doesn't fit what the things being asked about do. All of the people complaining that they've posed questions that make logical sense and then been accused of "XY" problems would likely not have been accused of using chocolate covered bananas to integrate European currency systems. It's in part the people who missed our point and pushed to rename to "XY" who have caused all this pain for you who now complain that you're being told that your questions are "XY Problems".

Chocolate covered bananas and European currency systems nicely communicate the fact that it's not just mundane "X" and "Y", but it's two things that prima facie make no logical sense together. I stressed this three times in my FGA. Mark-Jason Dominus used "logically nonsensical" too.

The headlined page here misses this, and waters it down to "seems like a strange problem to want to solve". It's not that the problems are strange and unusual to the answerers. It's that they are nonsense.

I've never used the "XY" name, myself, and I recommend its avoidance.

* https://jdebp.uk/FGA/put-down-the-chocolate-covered-banana.h...

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#22

Post by Semaphor »

wodenokoto wrote: post #10
Semaphor wrote: post #5

There’s always the running joke about people on SO claiming it’s a XY problem when it’s not. Alas, I encounter so many times when the OP did have an XY problem, the answers then solve the actual problem, but I never had an XY problem, have the problem in the title of the post (which no one solved or cared about), and leave without a solution. I wish moderators would adjust titles on SO questions that get updated to a…

Yeah, you really need to think two steps ahead and write out specifically "My problem is Y and not X, and the difference is ..." I find good success writing in my question "question is similar to except I need this and that, which that solution doesn't provide"

I meant it the other way. I encounter so many questions on SO, where the problem was X after all. And then X gets solved, everyone is happy. Besides me, who gets it as a search result for problem Y that no one, including the OP, actually was interested in solving.

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#23

Post by arcanemachiner »

resonious wrote: post #16
relix wrote: post #8

I often encounter the opposite. I would have a complex problem that I can legitimately solve by something reasonably simple yet I don’t posses the expertise on. Asking how to do Y, I need to spend an godawful amount of time wasting to convince people that no, it really is not an XY problem, and could we just focus on the literal problem description, which you could answer in like 3 minutes, instead of you trying to s…

Yeah the whole premise of the "XY" problem seems like it was written up by someone who regulars Stack Overflow. It's pretty frustrating when the highest-upvotes answer to a question is "actually you don't want to do that. do something else instead".

I think this is because people Googling a question often end up at a SO post that answers a slightly different question. But since the keywords blazed a trail to a certain answer, that's the one that gets the upvotes, even though it's not the "correct" answer.

This has happened to me many times.

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#24

Post by Nezteb »

xavdid wrote: post #4

We have a phrase to cut through this at work: "WAYRTTD". Someone will post a question and immediately below it, clarify why they think that'll solve their problem. e.g: > How do you assert that a jest mock was called? > WAYRTTD: My test passes, but I'm not sure function X was called and I'm worried it's passing anyway. Helps keep people on the right tracks more often than not.

This took me longer than I’d like to admit to decipher: “What Are You Really Trying To Do”

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#25

Post by matsemann »

relix wrote: post #8

I often encounter the opposite. I would have a complex problem that I can legitimately solve by something reasonably simple yet I don’t posses the expertise on. Asking how to do Y, I need to spend an godawful amount of time wasting to convince people that no, it really is not an XY problem, and could we just focus on the literal problem description, which you could answer in like 3 minutes, instead of you trying to s…

I'm sorry, but if people often do this to you, maybe reflect on them actually being right? Or that you're legitimately asking a stupid question given your self-proclaimed lack of expertise?

People don't answer that way to be smug or so. They do it because the thankless person they're spending their own free time helping will just come back with a new asinine question the moment one answers their posed question. It's from experience after helping thousands of people, not pettiness.

If perhaps you're the one in a million case where this isn't applicable, just add the context, then. Don't be angry about having to do it, that's quite entitled given that you're asking people to solve your problem for free..

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#26

Post by Doxin »

To stack overflow people: for the love of god please answer X before launching into your XY diatribe. People are on average not dumb, there's probably restraints preventing a solution to Y being workable.

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#27

Post by [deleted] »

Doxin wrote: post #26

To stack overflow people: for the love of god please answer X before launching into your XY diatribe. People are on average not dumb, there's probably restraints preventing a solution to Y being workable.

[deleted]

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#28

Post by thom »

relix wrote: post #8

I often encounter the opposite. I would have a complex problem that I can legitimately solve by something reasonably simple yet I don’t posses the expertise on. Asking how to do Y, I need to spend an godawful amount of time wasting to convince people that no, it really is not an XY problem, and could we just focus on the literal problem description, which you could answer in like 3 minutes, instead of you trying to s…

Yeah it’s often like speaking to ChatGPT, you have to put in an enormous preamble saying “answer exactly what I’m asking, I promise I’ve thought about it, I know it’s weird”.

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#30

Post by LeonB »

pyb wrote: post #14
relix wrote: post #8

I often encounter the opposite. I would have a complex problem that I can legitimately solve by something reasonably simple yet I don’t posses the expertise on. Asking how to do Y, I need to spend an godawful amount of time wasting to convince people that no, it really is not an XY problem, and could we just focus on the literal problem description, which you could answer in like 3 minutes, instead of you trying to s…

Pretty much stopped asking any questions on web forums because of this. Some people tend to "XY" you whenever they don't immediately know the answer to a complex question.

I’ve seen a pathology where people ask for irrelevant details to stall for time. As in: “hmmm what version is your operating system? And what’s the version of every package/dll on your computer?”
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