Prof Ben email is really rude, but I can (slightly) empathize with him when dealing with students whose code is very wrong (I don't know about OPs because I don't know the question).

I onced TAed a 3k CS mod, and a student asked me to help debug their assignment. I told them that their sample is wrong, and they can step through and trace the code to figure out what is wrong, and that I won't be spoon feeding students, especially for a 3k module (giving more help for a 1k module is understandable though). But the student told me that they don't know how to debug!! I was pretty annoyed at the student who had trouble debugging code at a 3k level... I probably got a 1 star TA rating from this person hahaha

It's really frustrating when you see a student struggling and can't help them, and they still message you about extra marks and/or debugging help