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  • +1 My Philosophy in the professional world is that I ALWAYS make time for another developer with a question. I will stop what I'm doing and answer another programmer's question every time. Well, just about every time - I have had exactly one colleague ever who was just a complete numb nut and never left me alone and I had to tell him I'd catch up w/ him in a bit - but I still did. It's called karma. I realize the academic setting may be a bit different but I don't recall anybody having the problem you're describing. Commented Mar 23, 2011 at 5:49
  • @Chuck - I like the sound of that. If all of us took the attitude that we don't have time to help other devs who have questions, Stack Overflow would never have been the success it is. Answering questions helps us to learn and understand things in a deeper way than we might have otherwise, and asking them helps us be the kind of humble developer that will continue to "suck less each day" as Jeff puts it. Commented Mar 23, 2011 at 11:16
  • @Chuck-The philosophy is good but when it meets the real-world, it often doesn't work. Sometimes you run into that person who finds that it is easier to keep asking for help than to actually spend effort figuring out the answer their self. I don't mind when it is one-off occasionally, but when it becomes the person's default behavior it severely impacts my ability to meet schedule. When this happens, I ask them to please start emailing the question and I will get to it when I am not involved in something else. Then they either latch on to someone else or learn to figure it out on their own. Commented Apr 30, 2015 at 15:49
  • In my experience, the help vampires are the ones who wouldn't move one finger if you were the one who needed help. Commented Jul 30, 2015 at 15:01