I’ve had cases like this in my practice: you ask a programmer to make some feature, and he answers, “It’s impossible to make it.” I ask, “Why?” and he replies, “I read such-and-such documentation, looked at such-and-such example, tried doing it this way and that way, and realized it’s impossible to make it.” And sometimes they say, “You might as well have asked me to fly to the Moon and back,” implying that I’m asking for the impossible.
I’ve noticed this thing about solving problems. Here’s a problem. If someone has solved it, that is proof that the problem can be solved in a finite amount of time. But the converse statement, “no one has solved it, therefore the problem can’t be solved,” is false. Often, after assigning an “impossible” problem to a more capable person, it turned out that he successfully solved it. The constructive approach is to break the problem down into simpler ones and point out where you got stuck.
I would immediately make a little note to myself: aha, that first programmer is either incapable or unwilling. When someone tells you “this is impossible,” the phrase should be interpreted as: “I haven’t tried doing it, and I don’t want to either.”
The poker whistled as it sliced through the air...