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The XY Problem (2014)

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Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#71

Post by Dan42 »

JdeBP wrote: post #21

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…

The "chocolate covered bananas and European currency systems problem" is certainly more accurate, but in terms of naming things, it's automatically disqualified because it's way too long to be usable in any context. So the "XY problem" wins by default. Maybe if you had titled it the "CCB-ECS problem" it would have caught on. Or something less abstract and chocolatey. Naming things sure is hard.

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#72

Post by pie_flavor »

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".

The goal of asking a question is not to get the exact answer to the words you spoke, it is to solve the problem the question is inspired by. It's a funny psychological thing, though, where people perfectly comfortable with the idea they don't know the answer to a question are easily offended by the implication that they don't know what question would lead to a solution, even though the foundational knowledge to answer the question is often the same as that required to ask it.

The reason people assume it's the wrong question is because they've seen a thousand other people ask the wrong question. This assumption is not a reflex that comes naturally, it is learned.

Experienced people who really have the question, understand XY just fine and start off with the context, but are happy to provide more; experienced people who say they are offended at common assumptions of XY tend to be in complete denial about legitimate cases of XY.

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#73

Post by pie_flavor »

cpach wrote: post #42

In my org there are a few persons who really like to link to this site. It often comes of as condescending. Like, “are you sure you really know what you’re doing?”. In their case, it’s also a giveaway that they are not good at seeing things from someone else’s perspective. Because if they were, they could approach the question in a much more constructive and graceful manner.

Of course you don't really know what you're doing. That's why you asked for help doing it. That's the whole meaning of the question. The error is not in the answerer assuming the asker doesn't know what he's doing, the error is in the asker treating the ability to ask the right question about the problem as a different category of ability than the one required to solve the problem, and so getting offended about the additional implication they don't have that former after admitting they don't have the latter.

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#74

Post by einpoklum »

plagiarist wrote: post #57
saghm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

On Stackoverflow in particular, there is also a ~YY answer. You explain that you specifically don't want Y, then someone tells you you are wrong and to simply use Y.

Well, yes, but many of the times people on SO say they don't want to use Y, it's because of some assumptions they have about Y, and actually they do want to use Y, or use it differently than usual etc.

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#75

Post by einpoklum »

ilyt wrote: post #55
resonious wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

It does happen very often when person trying to fix the issue is not an expert in the domain they are tinkering with and it is just some extra needed for their job and not main part of it. We see it all the time with developers for example: "I need sudo access to do XYZ" "Why?" "Because I can't access this directory" "Ok, I fixed permissions and put it in CM, test it without sudo" "Oh, it works, thanks". But, of cour…

That's why a good question gives some context regarding the motivation, or says something like "I have to do Y for reasons. Please don't answer about problems X or X' or X'', I just need to do Y."

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#76

Post by pickledish »

skohan wrote: post #67
matsemann wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Did you reflect on the case that actually you might be the smug one in this scenario, assuming that every person who asks a question doesn’t know what they are talking about, and you know better than them? I have experienced this many times, and it’s extremely frustrating, when people ask for the context, and I answer something to the effect of: > the context is quite hard to explain but I assure you I thought throug…

> > the context is quite hard to explain but I assure you I thought through this question and this is precisely what I need to know

I dunno, I mean, to me this just sounds like the "senior developer" phrasing of the same logic that the noob was using in the linked page. The core problem is that you don't know what you don't know, right, and no one is immune to that, regardless of age or experience.

IMO that we should all try to avoid believing things that sound like "I assure you I thought through this question and this is precisely what I need to know", since -- while we may be right pretty often (maybe even more often than not!), there will be times we're wrong, and in those times, our attitude about it will make us even harder to help than the "noob".

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#77

Post by kloch »

plagiarist wrote: post #57
saghm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

On Stackoverflow in particular, there is also a ~YY answer. You explain that you specifically don't want Y, then someone tells you you are wrong and to simply use Y.

Might as well just call this the "Stackoverflow problem", although it is really a family of problems where either the requestor or (typically) the responses are less than helpful.

As a third party searcher looking for answers to a specific problem, I would prefer to see a direct solution to the stated question first, even if it is followed by admonitions that "you probably don't want to do that" or "this other thing is a better approach".

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#78

Post by matsemann »

skohan wrote: post #67
matsemann wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Did you reflect on the case that actually you might be the smug one in this scenario, assuming that every person who asks a question doesn’t know what they are talking about, and you know better than them? I have experienced this many times, and it’s extremely frustrating, when people ask for the context, and I answer something to the effect of: > the context is quite hard to explain but I assure you I thought throug…

If you know what you're talking about so well, why is it so hard to explain the context? You know the old saying about if you can't explain something, you don't really understand it.

If you know what you're talking about so well, why are you unable to solve your problem? Perhaps the context would help someone help you.

If you can't be bothered, don't bother asking for others to use their own time to help you.

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#79

Post by nemetroid »

Every time this is posted, several people complain in the comments (with support from other commenters) that they get XY'd even though their question isn't nonsensical and can they just get an answer please. But every time I've seen a complaint supported by an example, it has been a clear XY problem.

Re: The XY Problem (2014)

#80

Post by dicytea »

billpg wrote: post #49

"Suppose I'm trying to allow multiple threads access to a Dictionary object." "You should use a ConcurrentDictionary." "Okay, but I'm actually asking about ways the compiler could help out with code duplication. I'm not actually trying to protect a Dictionary object." "A ConcurrentDictionary would fix that." "What I'm looking for is some way the C# compiler could help adding a wrapper to many functions. The Dictionar…

There were 2 suggestions for the asker to use ConcurrentDictionary before the asker clarified, and 1 more afterwards (probably because the answerer didn't read through the whole thread).

Other than that one response, this looks like a very constructive back-and-forth (which could've been way shorter if the asker presented his case accurately without exaggerating it), so I don't really see what's wrong with it.

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