-------------------------<snip>----------------
<attempt humour>
I think that is why some systems programmers seek to induce fear in
the hearts of application programmers. I used to think that this was
merely a form of torture for the sysprog's amusement, but I believe
this is actually a type of training.
The sysprog's hope is that if he consistently ridicules them for
asking stupid questions, eventually the questions will get better.
Maybe even to the point that the programmer will start to RTFC (and
RTFM!) before asking for help. A forlorn hope perhaps.
</attempt humour>
------------------------<unsnip>------------------------
I used to have a policy. When a programmer asked me what a message meant
the first time, I helped him look it up in the appropriate manual, and
understand what it meant. The second time, for the same message, I
dropped the manual on his/her foot. For the third and subsequent times,
I just threw the manual at him/her. We kept the necessary manuals freely
available for everyone to access. Failure to take advantage of this
resource, after the second or third time, was considered just plain
laziness and treated accordingly. Eventually, they started keeping
notebooks of symptoms and problems, and they started LEARNING!
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