[leepowers]

I've had the same experience. There's a bright line separating people who want to learn from those who want to offload the hard work of learning onto someone else.

The latter almost always ask simple questions serially - it's obvious they're looking for a sequence of steps to follow instead of sussing out the problem on their own. They want to use your problem solving abilities instead of developing and using their own.

The former usually ask pointed and precise questions - and after they get an answer they usually go away. I say this not to be anti-social (even though I am) but to simply note they go quiet because they're actually working the problem.

[tboyd47]

This is the point I was trying to make in my top-level comment, although you expressed it much more eloquently.

Practical programming involves dealing often with problems that are messy, obscure, and vague. They don't teach you that in CS101. Some beginners detest that class of problems because purism is trendy, but they still have the patience to work through them, and because those moments are what teaches you programming, they make progress despite their own objections.

Some people simply don't have the patience. They put up a lot of resistance to spending time on any problem that's not immediately recognizable to them. As a result, they never advance in the discipline.