Let's say that learning how to use an API for a specific purpose takes 8 hours of reading badly written docs and experimentation. Let's also say that you did an

Let's say that learning how to use an API for a specific purpose takes 8 hours of reading badly written docs and experimentation. Let's also say that you did an initial search and found no immediately usable solutions. It would take hours of sifting through garbage to fish something working out of the Internet. You know the API is popular and you know for sure that someone already did exactly what you want to do. You do not intend to use the API in the future. Posting a request for the solution on some forum or mailing list takes two minutes. Posting the response also takes couple of minutes, because the knowledgeable responder has the exact solution and doesn't need to search anything. Moreover, once the response is posted, it will become publicly visible and searchable by other people who are solving a similar problem. Should you post the request for the solution? If your answer is "no", you should not work in engineering. And if you spend hours of your personal time to scout message boards only to post a bunch crap that boils down to "use the search, ha-ha", the Internet will be a better place without you. Nobody owes you anything just because you think of yourself as some kind of guru. Not even people who ask questions or request easily digestible solutions. This is not academia. You're not a professor, who can ask his students to demonstrate "effort". You don't want to answer basic question? Don't answer them. Ignore them. It's easy. It takes much less time than whining about this imaginary problem.