Context is always useful, though. Because sometimes the person asking has gone down the wrong path and you could help them see the problem from a completely different angle.

Or maybe that context will let you know that yes, they have to use that ancient tech because that's what they have to use at work and no they can't install the latest fancy tech that does it so easily...

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 months ago

"Here is the answer, but why do you want that?" is a tolerable invocation of the X-Y problem.

"But why do you want that?" is derailing. It's an effortless, all-purpose, I'm-so-clever bot post, and it drags a straightforward technical hurdle into some MacGuyver-ass lateral thinking puzzle.

I was once trying to incorporate 2D characters into Blender, with normals. There was no higher goal. That was, itself, the point. But instead I got a bunch of useless advice about how to model my simple example object, and snippy bullshit about doing things properly in 3D. Nobody had a damn thing to say about the discrepancy between the scanline renderer and the path-tracing renderer.