The sad truth is that I work with people that pretty much have that attitude. Maybe that's not what they intend, but that's the result. When I've asked how to make a change to a JavaScript parser, I was told: I had to trace through the code, so you should too. This coming from the guy who requested the change. The thing is, when I pressed him for more information, he finally explained enough that I was able to make the fix in a couple of minutes, otherwise it would have been hours.