If you don't want to cut them loose then why not just have them move in with you and take care of them for the rest of your life? You're heading that direction anyways.

Ask them if programming is really what they want to do. I suspect that it isn't. When you're young, there's something about school that feels like it's something you gotta get through because other people have these expectations of you and if you fail you're letting them down. People forget that it's about setting yourself up for your future. Assuming your friends are not just trying to take advantage of you, that might be what they're going through. What they should be doing is getting themselves on a direction in something they love to do (or at least don't mind doing) for their career so that they can make their own way.

I used to be in a simialr situation, they are your friends and you are theirs - friends help each other. Help them, share your ideas, theres somehtign I read a long time ago that I completely forget now but the moral was that sharing your ideas gets you further than keeping them all to yourself. Letting people copy on the other hand is a completely different and you should not. I used to let people have very cut down things of mine, enough that it would help them but not enough to match what I had done - earlier versions etc.

In turn they can help back, might even be simple things - miss a class, dumb question, not entierly sure because your weren't listening, just because your smarter doesn't mean they don't have anyhting to offer in return. If you are concerned about group work then speak to one of your lecturers/professors, most have somehting in place so your marked individually for group work - might be as simple as splitting the project up and all agreeing on one bit (don't do their bit for them...).

Most people who are too lazy to do things for themself are usually quite happy to do the bare minumum, just help them with the bare minimum. You could maybe try scaring them into not copying in you (talk of plagiarism etc).

i've been through this and people even offered me money to do their assignments for them and all that. but i stopped doing that because i was scared that my professors might actually suspect me to be the cheater. plus i really hate phonies and pretenders. so my advise is, don't let anyone know about your skills and don't make anymore friends at college from now on

I often help my friends with their programming and I think its a good thing too. Without help from others you'd never get anywhere, surely a major aspect of this forum is based around that view point. Whenever I help people I sit down, try to understand their problem and help come up with an answer to a specific problem with them, just like if I was asking for help on this forum I wouldn't say "here is my work do it for me" I would ask specific questions about specific problems and ask follow up questions if needed.

If they don't have specific questions or don't know anything about what their doing then tell them to go and figure something out and come back when they have a real question. If they don't want to learn then they never will. I don't think a real friend would ever make you do all their work for them, but I would also always help a friend in need if they want to learn and put in effort to do so.

Thats my opinion any how.