&gt;Ask yourself, would this be the answer you give to a 12 year old girl who&#x27;s taken an early interest in programming? Or a single mother who&#x27;s trying to switch careers to improve her lot in life? Or your own mother, for that matter? Is it really constructive to be so abrasive?<p>It depends on what &quot;RTFM response&quot; we&#x27;re talking about.  if it&#x27;s simply,<p>1a) &quot;Duh, read the docs&quot; 1b) &quot;RTFM&quot;<p>then yes, it&#x27;s abrasive and experienced programmers should cut it out.  But we sometimes get the same flack for<p>2a) &quot;Ah, that&#x27;s called the controller and section 7 covers it.&quot;<p>2b) &quot;Oh, I see.  The term you&#x27;re looking for is database indexing -- you should be able to get some good hits with that search term.  Or &#x27;add mysql index&#x27; for your case.&quot;<p>If someone is really like the diligent younger-me programmer you&#x27;re referring to, they&#x27;ll have already explained why the manual doesn&#x27;t help.<p>You have to be careful not to equate the two kinds of levels of work (though obviously, politeness is always important, regardless of their level of effort).