Putting in the work before asking questions
06 Sep 2023What does it mean to ask a smart question? What does it mean to ask a stupid question? Nobody’s perfect when it comes to programming, or anything in life. We’re always learning and we should have that mindset. Having said that, throughout our learning processes we’re all going to be stumped at some point. There will be times we reach a wall blocking us from progressing. At those times you’ll have (hopefully) exhausted all of your resources that you have access to on your own and have decided: I. Need. Help. There’s nothing wrong with asking for help. After all, you’re not expected to have all of the answers. But in order to get the answers you need, it’s important to do everything in your power to help the person helping you. The best way to do that is to ask smart questions.
Smart Questions
In his essay, Eric Raymond provides excellent guidelines for effective communication styles when asking for help. Raymond explains that in order to help the questionee as much as possible, you as the questioner should provide as much support as possible. Before you ask your question, do your part and do as much research on the topic as possible. Use your resources available to you to find the answer. Whether that be via textbooks or googling, try to put in the effort before asking your question. After exhausting all options and finding nothing, make sure you include that in your question. “According to this article by so-and-so they instructed me to do this but that yielded no results,” Or “this forum I found seemed promising but after reading through it I found nothing related to my issue at hand.”
A question asked by Alexander on StackOverflow showed signs of their own efforts and an excellent use of their own time and resources that were implemented before asking the question. Alexander asks wabout the difference between React$Element and ReactElement and using flow with ReactJS. They bring up an article that they looked into that yielded no results. They also include the many examples they found with links but the error still shows up. After showing specifically what error shows up, they include possible solutions that they tried and what actually worked. They ended up finding a solution using React$Element instead of ReactElement. They then asked why this worked and where they could find information about React$Element. Alexander does a great job in asking specific questions and offering what they already know. They also show a want to learn about the issue at hand by asking for more resources that could help.
Thanks to Alexander’s smart way of asking questions an answer was given that offered links and sample codes that explains the answer. They also offered alternate solutions that Alexander could look into for further research.
Stupid Ways of Asking
In Raymond’s essay he emphasizes that it’s OKAY to be ignorant, but it’s not okay to play stupid. If you don’t show any effort to want to learn about the topic at hand, it shows. Just simply saying “help me” or “what is the solution?” is not a productive way of asking questions.
A question by bob george on StackOverflow was asked inquiring how to add a verticle line character at the beginning and end of their final print statement. They offer the python code they’re working on and nothing else. Something that bob could have done to help the questionees is to offer what print statement they’re getting and why it’s different from what they were expecting. They could discuss what methods they used to attempt to get an answer. Something else bob could have done would be to ask for resources that could help him find methods that could lead him to his answer.
Unlike the answer given to Alexander’s question, the answer given to bob was very short. “Use this method.” As if the questionee wanted nothing more to do with the question and simply answered it to get it over with. Had bob taken advantage of the question space he could have asked for what possible solutions could work and where he could find resources to learn about string formatting within python. Despite getting the answer to his question, his questionee may have been annoyed when reading and answering. Had this been a class or a workforce, you wouldn’t want to annoy your instructors or higher-ups with stupid questions causing a a bad impression of yourself. Do your best to help yourself as well as others when asking questions.