This is an uncharitably suspicious inferring of the other person's motives. Is it required that the "older person" self-identify their technical limitations every time, before you will read their verbalization of the situation as a basic statement of frustration and/or admission of technical defeat?

For many people, the notion of debugging a MySQL installation on Windows so that it works seems about as plausible as summitting K2 - they don't expect others nearby can simply do it, either. (Also, the suggestion of inter-generational manipulation is not attractive.)

> This is an uncharitably suspicious inferring of the other person's motives.

Agreed.

The charitable interpretation is a lot more reasonable: a parent/elder wants to spend time with their child/younger, and is even taking an interest in their career/hobbies.

I don’t think it’s uncharitable. It just recognizes that there are always energetic problem solvers out there who will jump at the chance to prove someone wrong.

It’s kind of like the well known technique: “If you want the right answer to your question, confidently post the wrong answer and wait for the replies.”

I'd say the implied request for help or at least ideas for troubleshooting or alternatives is so obvious and natural that it doesn't merit this level of suspicion about ulterior motives. It's completely normal to say "I can't reach the top shelf" and mean "can you help me get something off the top shelf?"

As an aside, commonplace implicatures like these are a kind of what's called "pragmatics" in linguistics.

My help comes at a price; they are going to sit there with me and listen to me blather on about what I'm looking at and what I find and what the solution was :)

>he doesn't want to do himself.

"want"?