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.
- 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".