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in reply to Re: XY Problem
in thread XY Problem

Yeah, that's not really the same as an XY problem, though.

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Re^3: XY Problem
by Anonymous Monk on Dec 21, 2014 at 18:34 UTC

    What? Yes it is.

    Plus, it's meant to be funny, and I think it is. It's just a play on a famous quote, one variant of which is

    Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems.

    http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/223634/what-is-meant-by-now-you-have-two-problems
    http://regex.info/blog/2006-09-15/247
    http://www.xkcd.com/1171/

      That's not the same. XY is when you have one problem, but it isn't the one you think you have, or at least isn't the one you're admitting you have.

        I certainly won't try to claim all XY problems have this form, but it does seem to account for a lot of them.