Throughout my time on the Internet, I've come to the conclusion that my primary usage is as a tool for other people; a knowledge slut, if you will. My brain stores alot of information and people want to take picks at that information for theirselves. Hey! I don't mind helping. But the thing is, people that ask for help recently have been stirred into some pseudo-cycle that they relentlessly do not know how to get off of. It starts off with asking for an example, then it goes to wanting me to do all the work for them, then it goes to wanting me to do the whole site/program for them so they can release it theirselves.
No offense, but come on people will you just learn how to do things on your own?! PHP, VB, C++ ... they're not that incredibly hard to learn; hell, there are tutorials out there for you. Tons and tons and tons of tutorials at your disposal and you want to pick at my head and tell me that I'm no longer a friend if I don't somehow magically do it all for you? Fine, give me root access to your box and then we'll start talking. I'm just getting tired of helping people and they forget who I am or what I did contributing to the factor of their application or website. If I provide an example, they want to dig it a little further and want me to do the entire thing for them. And I simply refuse to do such things now. You can beg, scream, cry, and say you won't be my friend anymore; it's not going to hurt me.
I'm not going to be sitting around at my computer telling you exactly what you've done to mess up your coding. That's what they call "debugging"; it's part of the programming process. You call yourself a coder, but you don't want to go through the process of debugging an application that you've started because you're confused as to what you've done wrong. I've been there nearly every single time I've made something that doesn't work 100% exactly how I wanted it to. "What went wrong here? What can I do to fix it? Why is it doing this instead of that?" are all simple questions you ask yourself while debugging and looking at the source until your brain bleeds; oh the joy of programming.
Help doesn't pertain just to programming; but that's the area that usually hits me the most. I can understand giving you example, but if you want me to do the whole entire thing it's simply not going to happen. Too many people pester others for the entire thing; or to fess up and give them YOUR coding instead of fixing their's because your's is usually better. Doesn't make sense, I feel like stabbing them sometimes...*growls*