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The XY Problem (2014)

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Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#31

Post by kelnos »

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…

> Let’s just get on with the problem solving instead of playing the meta game.

I feel like a lot of things in tech have become --- for lack of a better word -- memes, that people trot out to make themselves appear smart. The XY Problem is one of them. Sometimes we have actually thoroughly explored our problem space and know what we need to do, just not how to do it! But someone else seems to think they're going to get Cleverness Points by uselessly derailing the discussion.

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#32

Post by CipherThrowaway »

IMO the XY problem problem eclipsed the XY problem in significance a while ago. Q&A communities are full of useless XYsplaining that pollutes search results with non-answers.

If you know the answer to someone's question, and you want to be helpful and informative, then simply answer it. Follow your answer with "why do you need this btw? there might be a better approach" when appropriate. This is Example 1 from the OP. It's great!

If you can't answer a question then the most helpful thing to do is usually to stay silent. This is where the XY problem problem strikes: know-it-alls who need to have an answer for every question, who have nothing to say but still need to be heard.

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#33

Post by teo_zero »

zamadatix wrote: post #3

Example 1 is fantastic in that it clearly conveys how to avoid an oft forgotten portion of the XY problem: the XY problem problem. Personally, I think the amount of time spent attempting a literal answer before inquiring along the lines of if it's an XY problem should be proportional to the latency of the communication. Talking through a scenario where it turns out it wasn't an XY problem isn't really much of an inco…

Could the XY-problem problem be called the (XY)² problem?

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#34

Post by pishpash »

saghm wrote: post #9
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 like to call this the "YZ answer"; I'm asking Y, which is the actual question I have, but someone else tries to convince me that my "real" question is "Z" because they happen to know the answer to that. Tangentially related, but does anyone else besides me have an irrationally strong dislike of the name "XY problem" for this phenomenon? I feel like that name could apply equally well to basically any problem where y…

You're saying the problem isn't what the XY problem is, but that it isn't called Z. So an XYZ problem. /s

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#35

Post by JdeBP »

mjd wrote: post #19
JdeBP wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't. Mark-Jason Dominus was the cause of that name. I, Raymond Chen, Charles Cazabon, and Eric S. Raymond didn't use that name at all. I, in particular, chose a name that reinforced the an important part of the concept, missed in this discussion here, that the problem was nonsensical as posed . * https://jdebp.uk/FGA/put-down-the-chocolate-covered-banana.h...

Thanks! But it was actually Greg Bacon (responding to my original article) who thought of calling the phenomenon "XY problem".

That's why I went with "cause" not "coiner". (-: People took your "X" and "Y" and ran with them, and the fact that "X" and "Y" are not blatantly nonsensical together caused some of the meaning to be lost. I've watched this happen over the years on the likes of Stack Exchange.

If Greg Bacon had gone with "Bacon and Hand Drill Problem" instead, perhaps this wouldn't have become so distorted. Although I know a group of Wikipedia writers who would no doubt insist that bacon logically goes with everything. (-:

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#36

Post by pishpash »

CipherThrowaway wrote: post #32

IMO the XY problem problem eclipsed the XY problem in significance a while ago. Q&A communities are full of useless XYsplaining that pollutes search results with non-answers. If you know the answer to someone's question, and you want to be helpful and informative, then simply answer it. Follow your answer with "why do you need this btw? there might be a better approach" when appropriate. This is Example 1 from the OP…

There was never an XY problem to start with. There is an answer to this question and an answer to that question. Convincing someone to ask a different question is not answering a question, it's mentoring.

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#37

Post by lelanthran »

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 a false positive identification of the XY problem.

The audience falsely identifies your problem as an XY problem. This is, IME, due to the audience wanting to refactor the problem into something they can understand.

It's worse in JavaScript probl ms, where, due to the actual inability to do something simple like pause the runtime for 5s, the experts all spend tons of effort trying to convince you that there is no situation in which this is reasonable rather than simply say the runtime environment is too crippled to allow this.

It's nonsense of course.

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#38

Post by petabyte0 »

This thing is some sort anti-intellectualism that's rampant in StackOverflow. Along with saying that X is premature optimization or is "Not invented here" etc.

I think a lot of developers get infected by this mentality and stifle their learning by handwaving that it's not important instead of just diving deep and being able to solve any technical problem

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#39

Post by lelanthran »

kelnos wrote: post #31
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…

> Let’s just get on with the problem solving instead of playing the meta game. I feel like a lot of things in tech have become --- for lack of a better word -- memes, that people trot out to make themselves appear smart. The XY Problem is one of them. Sometimes we have actually thoroughly explored our problem space and know what we need to do, just not how to do it! But someone else seems to think they're going to ge…

It's one reason why ChatGPT is going to eat stack overflow alive in no time at all.

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#40

Post by kelnos »

pdimitar wrote: post #2

In my life experience, 95% of the troubles with the XY problem stem from the fact that the people are not aware that they have over-fixated on the potential solution Y for the problem X. They quickly assumed it, solidified it in their heads, and then most of the time spent with them is allocated to making them disentangle Y from X. Once that happens, the solution has usually presented itself already at this point --…

In my case it's very often the opposite: I have already thoroughly examined potential solutions Z, W, V, and Q, and have found them to be unworkable, decided that Y is the path forward, but am not sure how to implement it.

And then I have to spend two hours explaining X, and then patiently explaining why Z, W, V, and Q don't work before my colleagues finally agree with me that Y is what we need to do. Sure, very very occasionally do they come up with alternative T or perhaps K, that I hadn't considered, but I usually find that Y is still the way to go, or at least workable solution of similar complexity.

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