Here's the thing: farmerdoug knows he's not writing maintainable code. He's not worried about runtime or memory efficiency. He's not worried about best practices. He wants an answer. If he can cobble together a working solution, he's more than happy. If he does put interest into any of the above, it's prioritized well below getting a result.
Could he save time, do things more efficiently, save frustration, etc. with some investment? Sure, but it's not his thing. He might pick up a tip or trick from us here or there, but he doesn't want to be a programmer, he wants to solve some problems. If it uses excessive memory and takes n^4 time instead of nlogn that's fine. The machine is a tool to do his bidding, its resources are not precious.
Do I want to maintain his code? Nope.
Do I want to use his code? Not really.
Does it hurt me that he approaches code this way? No.
Generally I stress doing things "right", because I want to contribute to the collective programmer karma. I hope making us all better will mean better software to use, and better co-workers. In farmerdoug's case? Not an issue. Preaching and lecturing is not going to help anyone.
-Lee