What to do with an overtly exasperating colleague in computer science? I am working on my undergraduate research project in an HPCC. Whoever does programming knows this is a "teach-yourself" skill. Everytime a problem arises, you search the wealth of tutorials and guides on the Internet, you ask in an specialized forum and the last resource is to consult a colleague (everybody is very occupied with their own business).

A few weeks ago, a new MSc candidate entered our lab and was assigned a seat next to me. She seems unable to go beyond very basic commands like executing a for loop in a Bash script. We helped during the first weeks, but she is making no progress. I myself handed her down a couple of tutorials and scripts. What exasperates us is that the more frustrated she gets the more she starts mumbling expecting that someone will approach and solve the problem for her, not to mention that she interrupts every five minutes asking the same question we have answered several times. We spoke about it in the most kindly possible way, now she says we are bullying her!

She is completely unprepared and we are starting to think that she lied to get accepted by our supervisor. She is destroying the amicable relations in our lab and affecting performance of almost everybody. I decided to program the most I can in my laptop instead of using the HPCC, but a process that gets done in five minutes at home is solved in seconds in the lab.

We don't want to mess up her reputation with our supervisor, but we got to find solutions. Does anyone had a similar situation with a colleague? How would you solve it in the most diplomatic way?

UPDATE: Group meeting this morning. Our supervisor found out she has done nothing. She blame us. Our supervisor said it is not our business to solve her problems, she might have spoken them out a couple of weeks ago. She (our supervisor) asked her to separate an appointment to talk privately. Let's see what happens...
I will try to present yet another approach than the ones in the answers above. I don't consider it a definite solution, rather a way to go that may work for someone and may not for someone else. (And also, I would much more prefer to speak to someone higher-up, if you can; that's what the other answers discuss.)



The thing is: Be honest, but without judging the other person's qualities at all. I had been in such a situation before: person coming to me with simple problems that fall in the "googlable" or "in every book" or "in every course" or "in every tutorial" category, again and again.

The honest answer was, for me at least: Well, we have discussed a similar thing before. I'm sorry but I have got other things to do as well. I'm willing to help you with the burdens, but please, try to [point out some good resources here] before approaching me, and if you approach me, please make it specific enough so that we don't lose too much time solving the problems.

It is true, honest but not rude. After all, it is your time, your studies and you yourself who'll go on the market to sell your results, and you need to be productive. If this is a serious annoyance that makes your productivity drop significantly, they need to know it.