Re:Things Great Engineers (Almost) Never Say
by stephengillie on Wednesday October 10, 2012 @10:02AM
(#4636345)
This exactly.
Maybe a better way to say it is "There's no solution which I can implement in 5 minutes" or whatever time scale is suitable.
"There is no solution" is for most shorthand for "I can give you 20 solutions, but I don't think any of them are good enough to be effective for this case. Would you like to hear the 3 best ones I've thought of?"
It's a bad kind of shorthand to use. Stating that "these are the best solutions I know of right now, and I've exhausted my current ideas" is better than saying there's no solution - it avoids it seeming like you're just not interested.
Everything has a best solution after all, even if that solution may not be good enough.