Developer types: Mr. Sucker

This week for the first time I blocked someone on msn. Actually, I blocked this person because he were what I use to call the “developer sucker”. Here is how our conversations get started.

It’s usual for me to help other developers (and be helped) by IM. Actually, I just love to help and get in touch with other developers, because it’s a really rich experience (at least for me). So here is how this sad experience get started.

I use to screencast some developer courses for DevMedia, so this person (let us call him Mr. Sucker) appeared on my Msn with the following question:

Mr Sucker: Could you please send me all your videos that you post at DevMedia?

So, after I explained him that these courses were actually DevMedia’s property, here is what I heard:

Mr. Sucker: But you made those videos. So they’re yours! And they are too expensive too: US$ 0.75 each!

Well, here I started to get pissed. So I just thought that the best thing to do was to just ignore this part. Well, some days later, Mr Sucker appeared again with this message:

Mr. Sucker: How can I install Grails on Linux?

Not even a “good day”, “how are you?”, nothing. Just a question. So I explained to him, and in this week, this guy just asked me several times the same question. And I always sent to him the same links over and over again.

So, suddenly he just changed his question and told me that he was going to talk about Grails on Fisl 10, which was a shock for me. After all, how could he do that if he doesn’t even know how to install it??? So I asked him how could he do that without knowing anything about the subject. Here is his answer:

Mr. Sucker: I believe that in one week I can do that.

My answer, of course was: you WHAT???

Well, again I just ignored him (after all, since I don’t know him in person, maybe he could be a genius or something like that), and few hours later, another question appeared:

Mr. Sucker: Kico, could you please explain to me how Git works in detail? I want to use GitHub.

As a answer, I sent to him the GitHub guide link(which is excelent). And here is what I heard:

Mr Sucker: Explain to me how Git works in detail! I want to use GitHub.

I always sent the same answer. Actually, this cycle only stopped when I asked him why he was asking me the same question over and over again. Here is his answer:

Mr Sucker: I don’t wanna read. I don’t know english very well.

So I sent to him some links in portuguese, and to my shock, here is what he said:

Mr Sucker: Actually, I don’t like to read. I like to watch videos or by msn only. Please, could you help me or not?

And my answer was: you’re blocked. What really amazed me was the fact that Mr Sucker actually personified several of the traps I mentioned some posts ago in a single week. This kind of situation horrified me when I thought about the fact that there are thousands of these “programmers” around the world, actually employed and producing “something”. I mean: how someone so illiterate can get a job?

PS:
Mr Sucker is not going to read this post. It’s not a video and it’s not in portuguese.