When you're a novice in a field and you're coming to enjoy the field and acquire its core skills, you may encounter a problem, precisely analogous in its formulation to something you find trivial in another field, that here seems impossible—or just unreasonably difficult, or solvable but only by doing violence to the idiom of the field. You're frustrated, of course, but, recalling that you're a novice, you decide to ask for help from the wiser and more experienced, or maybe just bitch that it can't be done in the hope that someone will show you up.
They scoff: "of course it's possible; you just..." and it's something you've tried, and you show them why it doesn't work. They laugh it off: "well then you just..." and again. Perhaps a few more times. And ultimately they concede that you're right, there just isn't a way to do it.
You are disappointed, of course, that there isn't a good solution; and you're satisfied, of course, that you weren't mistaken, and that the people who were telling you you were were wrong. Even upon reflection, you can't tell which predominates.
