• agent_flounder@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    Makes me wonder if I’m on the spectrum or if ADHD people normally do this too. Or if this is an engineer thing.

    The flip side is I normally don’t trust other people to ask me precisely what they need and want because all too often they try to solve a problem but don’t come up with a great one and would be better off telling me what they’re trying to accomplish so I can come up with a more optimal solution. (Also if I am not sure about the best solution, I will try to state what I’m trying to do)

    • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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      1 year ago

      This is sometimes called an xy problem.

      Like, someone wants to do some calculations in a spreadsheet. They don’t know spreadsheets or Excel, but they know JavaScript. So they try to use JavaScript in their spreadsheet. They get part way and ask you “hey how do I get console.log to print to a cell?”. Which is weird. Instead they should be asking “how do I add up the numbers in this column?”

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem