eric raymond said:

"You often don't really understand the problem until after the first time you implement a solution." -- The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond

bingo. and it is only after you have implemented a dozen solutions -- each of them bearing on a different facet of the problem -- that you understand that the problem all along was an elephant, not a rope, or a tree, or anything else, and you are a blind man... -bowerbird