&gt; 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?<p>Yes, yes, and yes. The best thing you can do for someone is show them their questions already have been answered because they have access to a massive, growing body of human knowledge.<p>&gt; Is it really constructive to be so abrasive?<p>It&#x27;s amazing that telling someone their questions have already been answered is abrasive.<p>Now, I am going to be abrasive, because I&#x27;m not talking to a beginner.<p>&gt; Try to remember what it was like when you were first starting out with programming.<p>Ya, someone was going to to bring that up, like there is some sob story everyone has not being able to read documentation.<p>I&#x27;m not a programmer. I have to look up all sorts of beginner stuff all the time. Always have because I don&#x27;t spend a lot of time getting better at it. I don&#x27;t ever have to ask questions, and I haven&#x27;t from before StackOverflow or where ever programmers asked questions before, because any question or issue I had had already been asked and answered (over and over). My problems have been encountered by everyone else at the same level of experience as I am. And because I do search for answers, I don&#x27;t have to wait for someone to come along to answer.<p>Answering the same questions over and over without telling them they could have found the answer themselves is giving a man a fish. Your not learning simply being told answers.<p>&gt; Ever been to a foreign country and have someone berate you for ... not knowing how to speak their language well enough?<p>No I speak English so I expect everyone else to as well. This is apparently appropriate behavior since it is appropriate to expect everyone else around me to answer ever question I will ever have without ever having to do any work or research of my own.