YX Problem

https://www.sicpers.info/2024/03/yx-problem/

by rkta • 2 years ago

109 90 2 years ago

dmkolobov• 2 years ago

This article definitely brings to mind hobbyist embedded programming forums, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, etc.

theamk2• 2 years ago

I think those are usually an opposite example? There are a lot of unusual solutions in those areas that people ended up doing for absolutely no reason, simply because they didn't know better.

lupire• 2 years ago

"YX Problem" aka "geeksplaining" originated right here on HN 9 years ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10023951

Also a few other takes based on that comment.

https://csf.github.io/blog/2018/05/01/the-yx-problem/

https://yxproblem.wordpress.com/ (SEO ad farming page?)

scj2• 2 years ago

"I'm working with a second-party pre-compiled library and don't have a lot of wiggle room. After careful consideration (of both the library and my other job prospects), I want to do $DUMB_THING. Yes, I know it's dumb, but trust me, $SMART_THING is not an option. Unfortunately, $DUMB_THING is not well documented, because it's legitimately a bad idea, so I was hoping someone could fill in some gaps."

If you ever help someone in that situation, know that you are a hero among programmers.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 2 years ago

Sounds like a classic Beans and Noses thing: https://archive.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/07/08/beans-and-nos...

inhumantsar• 2 years ago

I spent 3 hours last night digging into a Linux workstation issue along these lines. the solution was in a comment on a heavily downvoted SO answer.

the commenter was (unfortunately, inevitably) shat on by a large number of people but it saved me from giving up on tech to live in a cave the rest of my days.

all I could really do was comment with my thanks but that still felt wholly inadequate.

plagiarist2• 2 years ago

My favorite is the version where X=!Y, as can often be seen on Stack Overflow when people specify a constraint that some answers just ignore.

inopinatus• 2 years ago

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a thumb.

brudgers2• 2 years ago

I think it predates HN.

This is “What is the XY problem” on Meta-StackExchange from 2010:

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-x...

The top answer links to this wiki page that goes back to 2006:

https://mywiki.wooledge.org/XyProblem

First revision here:

https://mywiki.wooledge.org/XyProblem?action=diff&rev1=1&rev...

rezonant3• 2 years ago

It might predate HN but you are looking at the XY problem, not the YX problem. In this case, they are not commutative.

joshu• 2 years ago

it didn’t originate here. i remember it being used on IRC #perl and years before this. here is an example from 23 years ago: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.perl.misc/c/rCCGCpipjH...

rezonant3• 2 years ago

That's the XY problem. This is about the YX problem.

ShamelessC• 2 years ago

Why did you think that was the first usage? The conversation linked even implies they’re referring to a previously known concept - no one said “I call this the “YX problem”. Merely reiterated a common cultural touchstone.

Dylan168075• 2 years ago

no one said “I call this the “YX problem”

Right, they said "What would you call [it], the YX Problem?"

Is there a meaningful difference as far as coining a term?

The idea of "what if this phenomenon happens in reverse" existed, but adding a name isn't nothing.

civilized2• 2 years ago

Both problems come from hiding assumptions in an attempt to focus on a conclusion, which is presumed to be the only relevant information. That's not a bad thing to do in general -- we always have to be selective what we communicate. It's only bad if your hidden assumptions are wrong.

cjbgkagh4• 2 years ago

I wouldn’t say bad as I would maybe say sub-optimal but unavoidable - assumptions have to be made. I’m assuming the ‘bad’ comes from the cumulative ‘microagressions’ to which I would prefer people just toughened-up a whole lot.

Quite often the person asking questions is a newcomer and is on the path to making the same newbie mistakes we all made when we started. Knowing what question to ask is half the battle.

I got pulled into HR by a young intern for not answering her stated question and instead suggested she was taking the wrong approach and offered an alternative approach. It was clear to all involved that my assumption was indeed correct but she still took it as a condescending slight. It seemed like to me she was looking for reasons to take offense.

I stopped helping her or other interns after that, let the young’uns figure it out for themselves. I figured my time would be better spent shielding myself from the consequences of the coming competency crisis.

falserum6• 2 years ago

I bet that problem was not the answer but how you did it.

civilized2• 2 years ago

I would like to offer a different perspective than the one you are getting from a couple other folks. Not being in the room it's hard for me to be sure, but my guess is that both of the following are true:

1. The person you tried to help could have taken your suggestions in the spirit intended, rather than leaning on a threatening or insulting interpretation of them.

2. You could structure your response in a way that would make your good intentions clear and make the other person more open to the information and less likely to feel threatened or slighted.

It could even be that, from some reasonable perspective, the other person is 100% to blame for the negative outcome, and still, at the same time, you have the ability to avoid such things in the future by adjusting your approach. It's like defensive driving: I'd rather not have accidents at all, and if it's possible to avoid them, I adjust my driving style accordingly. Regardless of how poorly others drive and how much to blame they'd be for accidents I prevented by being defensive.

That way, we can hopefully get the enjoyment of helping others, and the gratitude of those who are more inclined to be grateful, without the trouble of unintentionally angering those whose response is more... complex.

bena• 2 years ago

People who descend into this are kind of missing the point of the XY problem in the first place.

The XY problem is to get all parties involved in thinking about the actual goal and how to achieve that goal. By presuming you know what the Y is already, you're kinda falling to the XY problem yourself.

Very rarely do we need to, for example, draw a square for the sake of drawing a square, there's usually a larger problem we're trying to solve.

Using this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10024188 as the example.

None of those responses is actually relevant to solving the XY problem (if it exists). The user wants to draw a square with HTML Canvas. Before suggesting any course of action, we need to know why he wants to do that.

re2• 2 years ago

The amount of information needed before answering a question can and should vary depending on the question itself, depending on the context. There is zero harm in giving an answer about how to draw a square with HTML Canvas, even if the asker actually has a different problem they're trying to solve—they'll probably figure that out pretty quickly. On the other hand, if the question is "How can I encrypt and decrypt credit card numbers for storage in my database", or "What ratio of bleach to ammonia is best for cleaning mold", some inquiry about the broader problem is warranted.

blt• 2 years ago

Your response seems to assume that "XY-probing" responses are equally good as straightforward responses, but they aren't. If your question is solid, it's really annoying when others try to XY-probe it instead of answering it.

Therefore, before giving an XY-probe response to a question, one should think about the probability that the question hides an XY problem.

If the question is about drawing a square, there's no good reason to assume it's an XY problem. Better to just answer the question.

If the question is about something strange that should never come up in typical applications, maybe you can start XY-probing towards the "real question".

legends2k2• 2 years ago

Graphics programmer here. Many times drawing a square isn't a great option in games; particularly when there are many. The usual approach is blitting them squares from raster/image data which is a mere copy of texture data into frame buffer. If you're experimenting with Bresenham's line drawing or writing a game is the right probing question here.

Pannoniae• 2 years ago

It can be counterproductive though.... reminds me of quite a few OSS projects where the user asks "how do I do X?" only to be met with "you shouldn't do X, <insult>"

OJFord• 2 years ago

That's my reading too, it's not really 'YX' problem (that doesn't even really make sense to me by analogy?) - it's when someone claims you have an XY problem and No actually you do need X, you just didn't bother to go into why because it's not relevant/none of their business/etc.

I think this frequently comes up in the form Well actually the idiomatic way to do this is not X but X'; but X really was needed by OP due to some unstated constraint. (Because why would you state it, especially if you're unaware that you're doing it a remarkably unidiomatic way. You're just asking how to do what you're doing.)

zamadatix• 2 years ago

We need to know why to optimize or refine the suggestion but nothing really says we need to halt any suggestion until that point.

For almost all real world questions a more neutral mix of "Well, you could try ${x} by doing ${xthings} but it might also make sense to do ${y} or other things depending on the ultimate goal" actually gets better results faster than a pure XY or YX approach.

dap2• 2 years ago

There are always a million problems people are trying to solve.

I'm trying to draw a square because I need to draw a button. I'm trying to draw a button because I need the user to be able to click it. I'm trying to make something the user can click so they can use this feature. I'm trying to make this feature so the user can do ... I'm trying to enable the user to do ... so my product can be successful. I'm trying to make the product successful so my company can survive. I'm trying to help my company survive so I can keep getting paid. I'm trying to get paid so I can feed my family. ... It goes on.

The XY problem, at least as I usually see it phrased, implies that there's exactly one problem up the stack that the asker should have asked about. There's not. It's impossible to know how much context would be useful and it depends on how much help the asker wants. Sometimes, I just want to draw a square and don't want help redesigning the feature. Maybe sometimes I _could_ use that kind of feedback. I think what's important is to meet people at the level they've asked the question, and _maybe_ suggest that it might be the wrong level. But so often respondents just obnoxiously insist on redesigning the feature when I just need to draw a square.

camel-cdr• 2 years ago

I think a good answer to a question that you think is an XY problem, should answer both X and Y.

When there is an XY problem, Y might be the better option, but most of the time understanding the solution for X is still very interesting.

Also, if somebody can answer Y, but not X, are they really qualified enough to answer the question?

kevincox2• 2 years ago

The problem is more often that I can answer X, but it is very long, convoluted and odd. Because the question is based on bad premises. If you ask Y it saves us both a lot of time because I can give you a good answer without going down path X in the first place.

koala_man• 2 years ago

My favorite example that I see pretty often is "In posix grep, what's a regex that matches lines that don't contain the word `test`?"

The X answer is a lecture on language theory including the construction and inversion of finite state automata. Absolutely interesting, but a long and dense chapter in a CS textbook with no practical applications.

The Y answer is `grep -v test`

wokwokwok3• 2 years ago

You think, in your opinion, that Y is both what the asker wants and needs; but this is empirically and objectively false in some cases, unless you are infallible (unlikely).

...and here-in lies the problem. It's the hubris that "I am right" that leads people to answer Y instead of X.

Y and X are maybe related, but ultimately, X is empirically what was asked. It's your take that Y is the solution that the asker wants instead of X.

Maybe you are right, sometimes.

It's very unlikely you are always right.

Therefore, it's likely, that sometimes when you do this, you're actually not helping; the answer is X, and your comments about Y are both wrong and unhelpful.

Come on, are you never wrong? We're all wrong sometimes.

At the very least, you can often start answering X (a long partial answer) along with 'and this is why Y is maybe a better solution...'

I suggest that the 'race to be the first answer and get karma for it' is the motivator that drives people to do this on some platforms, rather than any actual desire to help / any actual competence in the question domain / actually knowing what they're talking about in many cases; a partial answer to X is never that time consuming.

...it's just more time consuming than not answering it at all.

plagiarist2• 2 years ago

It is truly classy when people do both. Very respectful of the questioner while still conveying that there might be a better approach. You're right, in almost every case it is interesting to read each approach.

thayne• 2 years ago

Another valid response if you think it is an XY problem is to ask for more information. Or even do all three: "Here's how you do X. But if you really need Y, then you should do Z instead. What are you actually trying to do here?"

Also, if somebody can answer Y, but not X, are they really qualified enough to answer the question?

Maybe. It could be that there just isn't an answer to X. Or the answer is "you can't", so the author tries to give an answer that is more helpful, in case the asker actually wants Y (it would probably be good to explicitly explain that though). Or maybe there are multiple ways of interpreting X, and the answer interpreted it a different way than you expected.

ronnier• 2 years ago

Also see https://xyproblem.info/

TillE• 2 years ago

I've had this issue a lot, usually secondhand (search for a solution to X, find a bunch of forum posts that scold about X being bad and wrong even though it is absolutely the correct approach in my scenario).

But realistically, any kind of programming Q&A forum is absolutely flooded with beginners and dolts and literal children, so if you've somehow decided to be a power user that answers a million questions, it's probably reasonable to assume that they really want Y.

lolinder• 2 years ago

It might be reasonable to assume of the original asker, but it's unfair to the dozens of people who follow in their footsteps and find their question years later.

I've lost track of the number of times that I need to X (even though I know Y is an option that is probably better in most circumstances) and had to dig through dozens of "do Y instead" answers before finally finding something helpful. More often than not the original asker actually accepts Y as the answer and thanks the responder, but now the search space for X is polluted with yet another non-answer.

I agree with another commenter downthread—the best response when you think you're looking at an XY problem is to answer both X and Y. That way you can be sure that the naive asker is set on the right path (if they are in fact naive), but you're still logging the answer to X so that searches for it don't become useless.

falserum6• 2 years ago

but it's unfair to the dozens of people who follow in their footsteps and find their question years later.

Exactly.

In similar fashion: duplicate questions are alternative ways how people can find the question. (I.e. Useful for later searchers)

dap2• 2 years ago

Even in a forum that's mostly beginners, you can still construct responses that are appropriate for both beginners and experienced users. There's no need to assume.

zettabomb• 2 years ago

Simple questions are free and make everyone's lives better. "Hey are you sure you need X? Have you tried anything else?" (or something to that nature) takes seconds to type. The answer isn't much longer, "Yes, I tried A, B, and C but they don't seem to be appropriate for my problem. X meets my requirements but I can't get it to work" (again, or similar). It's beneficial to the responder (don't spend unnecessary time answering the wrong question), beneficial to the asker (perhaps it really IS an XY problem, and you can help show them a better way, or if it isn't they don't get frustrated with someone mistakenly answering Y), and better to all future visitors who now understand enough context to determine if reading further is going to help or not.

sodapopcan• 2 years ago

I kind of just YX'd myself in a way. I read all the comments without reading the article first. My brain autocorrected "YX" to "XY" and I kept thinking, "What the heck are all these people on about?? They seem to talking about Y when they mean X(Y)..."

dsp_person• 2 years ago

I run into "XY Problem" the most when I'm googling X, usually the argument is in the arch linux forum or maybe reddit. It can be infuriating when yes I actually literally have my reasons for doing X, and seeing them dismissed. And then it's extra funny when someone does present the solution (Yes, thank you person!) and then the next response from an admin is something like "Learn not to necrobump. Thread locked". Uhg. Honestly, anytime I see the word necrobump, the info that was shared actually helped me out a lot. Such a dumb rule. I don't care about getting email notifications from 5 year old threads. A better solution for the hard-line no necrobumpers should be a auto-unsubscribe after N days feature. Or since they are such expert authorities I'm sure they could rig up a script or email filter to moderate their own feeds.

dpkirchner• 2 years ago

And then it's extra funny when someone does present the solution (Yes, thank you person!) and then the next response from an admin is something like "Learn not to necrobump. Thread locked". Uhg.

YX Problem

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