Sure, but asking someone something that should be easily answered in a few seconds is also rude.
Programming is an intense job, in that it takes a lot of focus and time to build up a mental model of what you're working on to make progress
Sure, but asking someone something that should be easily answered in a few seconds is also rude.
Programming is an intense job, in that it takes a lot of focus and time to build up a mental model of what you're working on to make progress
I highly doubt you never ask questions that you could’ve looked up yourself. “Go Google it” translates to “this isn’t worth my time,” which is a pretty rude way to be.
What I'm trying to say is that the cost of answering the question might look like 30 seconds to the person asking.
What really happened is, you context switch, answer a mundane question, and now spend 30 minutes to get back to the mental state that you were in that made you productive
But sometimes it isn't worth my time. If I'm being asked something about what I'm working on, fair enough. If I'm being asked what a command-line switch for curl does (and that's not related to what I'm doing) the total cost is less to look at the docs, rather then asking me to look at the docs.
Not weighing my time and effort into the equation is rude on behalf of the asker.
Nobody said you must answer any and all questions sent your way or that everyone is allowed to dismiss the value of your time. We’re veering away from the original discussion here.