[colmvp]

I think it's a bit much to expect meetups, especially free ones, to explicitly teach you concrete skills that are exceptionally well done. If someone is doing it for free, then I can accept the fact that they spend considerable time promoting themselves or generalizing their message (and specializing it for a paid audience). In general, my expectations for free education sessions are pretty low.

I don't think it's fair to expect what often amounts to volunteer effort from the part of the organizers to provide the same learning experience as institutions that have paid full-time employees.

Meetups however are a fantastic way to get outside of your social circle (work, school) and meet new people. One of my favorite general meetups is Civic Tech, since it's a mish-mash of people in the tech, academia, public sector, and non-for-profits.

[aaronchall]

Exactly so, I try to avoid people who seem to want me to do all of their programming for them.

If I do it all for them, they don't learn, and it's a bit of a waste of my time.

What I like to do is to help people get over a blocking problem on a project by teaching them something they didn't know yet. We usually take their code from a non-working state to a working state. Then I point out other problems with their code, tell them what they need to work on (usually involving reorganization of their code), and then I can (and do) focus on other things.

I don't run into a lot of dependent help-seeking types in real life at office-hour style meetups. They generally understand that I'm going to work on my own stuff, but they can come get me if they run into a roadblock.