[marbletiles]

You're putting way too much baggage on to "how hard". It doesn't necessarily carry any implications of "yesterday and with no budget"; it's a scoping question.

"How much will it take and how much will it cost to... ?" condenses down to "how hard…". You can tell they're functionally equivalent because you can give the exact same answer to both.

"Can't you just" is a whole different story, granted.

[nnq]

I somewhat agree with you, it's not "dishonesty", but when people phrase it like "how much will it take and how much will it cost to..." they usually have in mind the fact that it will take time and have a cost, whereas when they use the condensed variant, they tend to think that it can be "squeezed in there and worked on at the same time as everything else without delaying anything" ...it's folk psychology I know, but imho there's a more or less subconscious association between using the condensed form for talking about something and wanting to minimize the apparent cost/impact/etc. of it :)