Chixe

No, you don't need to entertain such people. Don't support leeches.

By all means, if you have the time and someone asks a sensible question, answer it. That's really kind of you to take the time, but don't feel compelled to do other's work for them. They won't get anything out of it, a quick fix, but then they're lost the next time they encounter a similar problem.

This used to happen to me a lot, and I would just write them a nice walkthrough of what their app is going to do. Ex. For a notes post, you want to check if they're logged in, what note id they're posting to, etc... But not give them any code.

The thing is, leeches will always get their code they want, but just make an effort to not be that last stop :P

Show them how to eat but don't feed them.

Over at a couple of Photoshop forums I hang out at that is our philosophy. Have them show you what they have and then give theem guidelines on how to get where they are going.
I'm sure it would be different with programing if they had an error that was stopping what they wanted, but I'm sure you understand what I am trying to say.

Well if your running a blog about programming, it seems common that people would email with their questions...but I dont have a blog so I'm just speculating....

I don't know much about programming but I usually ask people how do I do whatever they did...and I usually still don't get the answers and end up painfully doing it myself.

I usually write about my life's and relationship perspectives. While there is no code people can download, I have gotten emails from people asking me if I can help them get through their breakup or how to be happy.

I can't make them any happier, that's something they have to find in themselves. So usually I end up being a cheap shrink.

People always want the easy way out.

This happened to me almost immediately when I moved onto campus. For some reason (a combination of people either being medical science majors or automechanics) , of all the kids staying on campus, there's only 2 computer science majors, and I'm the only one with 10 years experience actually doing some seriously hardcore shit.

Well, it would happen that everyone decides to come to me for all of their problems, asking me to fix it, come up with a solution etc. I've started charging people ..they go away now

dont give source code.. or dont replay to those who wants just ready made code..

yes answer those people who are working something at least and stuck in some problems...

I administer my computer science forums - CompSci.ca, and also get private messages asking for help all the time. My standard response is to have the user post problems and questions as a new thread in the proper "Help <language>" section. The standard board rules are to never give out full solutions (userbase is mostly high school / University level), but assist with having the users ultimately figure things out (and thus learn) on their own.

I give a lot of support on Experts-Exchange for nothing... So much so that I came #1 in webdev for the past year so I got a t-shirt (woo!)

I don't mind answering situation questions that need specific answers because I believe it teaches me something in the process.

I also blog/write about my programming problems and how I overcome them. I've written several tutorials ranging from pointers in C to recordset paging in MSSQL to getting the "real" IP of your website users.

If I bump into a large problem, chances are somebody else might too -- writing it up serves two purposes: 1. it might help me when I've forgotten it all and 2. it might help somebody else and get me an ounce more organic SE traffic.

Coincidentally, my main (stable) traffic income is from searches for specific problems that I've blogged or written about.

Thanks for the help.Now i'm ignoring such leeches,simply concentrating on those which offers parallel resources for me.