I strongly agree. Sentence formulas are a hack. The actual advice should be, believe something positive. Specifically, believe that the person is basically s

I strongly agree. Sentence formulas are a hack. The actual advice should be, believe something positive. Specifically, believe that the person is basically smart but just didn't know X. That leads to natural utterances like: "Sweet! Uh...that run time is pretty terrible though. Don't worry, let's see what's up with that. (Twenty seconds later:) Ohhhhhhhhh, ha, ok, check this out." The novice coder knows they suck. They're not really worried about that because, well, they're still here. What they are worried about is that you'll write them off. So don't.