this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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Old People Facebook
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The sublemmy for "Old People Facebook" is a curated space showcasing the charming, confusing, and often hilarious social media endeavors of the older generation. From accidental memes and cryptic status updates to endearing attempts at using modern technology, this sublemmy celebrates the unique ways seniors engage with the digital world.
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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
TIL thanks. Strange that I've been in IT all this time and haven't heard the term frequently.