Why would you say something like this? The IRC Python channel is a kind of state machine which goes like:

- How do I do this?

- Why do you want to do this?

- Because XXX

- Then that's not really what you should be doing, it's dangerous/inefficient/etc., do this instead

The post about Acme could have been a one-line answer: "If you want do do any of this, just use a better editor".

There are many times when I said "I need to do X, I know it's ugly, but I've considered all the alternatives and, for reasons too lengthy to go into right now, I just need to do X. How can I do it?" only to get people treating me like an idiot who doesn't know anything, and only giving an answer after I've responded to every single of the alternatives with my reasons.

Sometimes, people aren't new.

It's a state machine without a direct transition from "question" to "answer" :)