alt Hacker NewsOh I love that game! (At least I think it's a game)
You ask how to do X.
Member M asks why you want to do X.
Because you want to do Y.
Well!? why do you want to do Y??
Because Y is on T and you can't do K so you need a Z
Well! Well! Why do you even use Z?? Clearly J is the way it is now recommended!
Because Z doesn't work on a FIPS environment.
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Can you help me?
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I just spent 15 minutes explaining X, Y and Z. Do you have any help?
...(crickets)
Replies
My heuristic is that if your interlocutor asks follow-up questions like that with no indication of why (like “why do you want to do X?” rather than “why do you want to do X? If the answer is Y, then X is a bad approach because Q, you should try Z instead”) then they are never going to give you a helpful answer.
How do I add a second spout to this can?
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Well, the pump at the gas station doesn't fit in my car, but they sold me a can with a spout that fits in my car.
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It's tedious to fill the can a dozen times when I just want to fill up my gas tank. Can you help me or not?
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I understand, but I already bought the can. I don't need the "perfect" way to fill a gas tank, I just want to go home.
Tbf the problem there is probably FIPS more than anything else.
To be fair, asking why someone wants to do something is often a good question. Especially in places like StackOverflow where the people asking questions are often inexperienced.
I see it all the time professionally too. People ask "how do I do X" and I tell them. Then later on I find out that the reason they're asking is because they went down a whole rabbit hole they didn't need to go down.
An analogy I like is imagine you're organising a hike up a mountain. There's a gondola that takes you to the top on the other side, but you arrange hikes for people that like hiking. You get a group of tourists and they're all ready to hike. Then before you set off you ask the question "so, what brings you hiking today" and someone from the group says "I want to get to the top of the mountain and see the sights, I hate hiking but it is what it is". And then you say "if you take a 15 minute drive through the mountain there's a gondola on the other side". And the person thanks you and goes on their way because they didn't know there was a gondola. They just assumed hiking was the only way up. You would have been happy hiking them up the mountain but by asking the question you realised that they didn't know there was an easier way up.
It just goes back to first principles.
The truth is sometimes people decide what the solution looks like and then ask for help implementing that solution. But the solution they chose was often the wrong solution to begin with.