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> the problem of "Why do you want to do that? You should do this instead

IIR, there's a word or idiom that describes this kind of solution, I can't think of it and now it's going to bother me until I do. It's a stackoverflow issue, someone asks "How do I do X?" Someone will counter, "Why do you want to do X?" and upon receiving additional information, answer, "You don't want to do X, or this other thing you're doing before doing X. You want to start this way and go down this path and that way you don't have to do X." Maddening!



I remember now! It is called the XY problem.

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




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