[perl4ever]

When you are doing something at work, often you have to do something that seems absurd to a random person on the internet, simply because the easy, sensible way would rely on things and people that are not under your control. A lot of people come from a perspective where you should be able to administer everything in an organization yourself, and that doesn't happen in any place I've ever worked. The vast majority of my experience with 'real world' programming is working around institutional barriers and silos.

I find the attitude of "solve your problem by ignoring stated constraints" particularly irritating among database gurus, who should be more in tune with the business world than a lot of people.

When someone simply refuses to accept the constraints of a problem, it doesn't demonstrate intelligence, even if the problem as stated is insoluble; better to just ignore it. All they are really saying is "sucks to be you, glad I don't have to work there" which is boorish and unproductive.

None of that means that people don't sometimes go down a rabbit hole that they didn't need to. But know-it-alls generally need to step back and either disengage entirely or consider the constraints on a problem.