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Jeff Prosise laments about the thick vegetation of "fan mail" they must chop through each day. Which is a pretty obvious and expected phenomenon, actually. Except to those who are actually asking the questions - since they are the ones who possess the mentality that authors and technical industry personas somehow owe them with personal obligation to conduct private tuition and coaching on a one-to-one basis.

It just amazes me how many people can even think it acceptable behaviour to disturb them with matters beyond the scope of their own published works. These people are busy. Yes, just like everyone else. If matters brought to them are not specific to their line of work (nope, asking them to school ignorants in programming is not their profession) or level of interest, then it is a tremendously time-wasting affair for them. Please spare a thought of consideration for them.

Would you ask Michael Jordan to teach you basketball, or Tiger Woods to coach you in golf? Or ask the President of United States how to lead and organise your new club? I fear there are some who unabashedly do.

It's the "no shame" syndrome. Happens a lot in technical forums too when people pop inside, asking a stupid question where the answer can be discovered by RTFM and then expect people to answer their simple question. Saw quite a few questions in the vein of "How do i declare a string array, please help. Urgent" and not trying to be racist. Quite a lot of these questions come from nicks which sounded indian.

Oh trust me, it definitely ain't a trait unique to Indians, at all. This is a fundamental problem of humanity.

More opinions on MSDN Mag, about the Dark Side of being a guru.

And indeed. So perennial is this problem of the leeches that a dedicated blog, in spirit of TheDailyWTF, has been established for all our enjoyment and celebration at the world's ugliest in software development.

Plz Send Me The Code