Asking Questions the Right Way
25 Jan 2018
What Are Wrong Questions
Ever since I was a kid I use to always believe that there were never any wrong questions to ask. Teachers and guest speakers would always say “Any questions? Don’t worry there are not any stupid questions.” After reading Eric S. Raymond’s “How To Ask Question’s The Smart Way”, I realized that there are smarter ways to ask a question. Raymond talks about being interested in your question and show the community that you care. What Raymond means is to show people that you did your research first by sharing what you have learned. This shows people that you are not lazy and did everything you could. The community will appreciate your effort and will be more willing to help you out. Before reading this article, I didn’t give much thought about how to ask questions. Now after reading it I realize the importance of asking smart questions.
Smart Questions?
I think it is very important to ask smart questions in general, but especially as a software engineer. Raymond mentions a consequence to not asking smart questions. I really agree with what he says about asking questions that are simple. It shows the community that we may be showing off, even though we may not be. It also shows the community that we are lazy and are exactly like people who just take answers without trying to learn the material. Raymond describes these people as “losers.” The community may portray us as these types of people if we ask questions like these. As a software engineer it is very important to ask smart questions because we are trying to be helpful to the community. Smart questions can help lead to finding out more information then previously realized. Asking these type of questions help us to discover problems and deepen our understanding, according to Raymond. I completely agree with this because someone who answers the question may help you understand different areas of the subject or reveal new material you may have not known before.
I Get it Now
Class problems are given as examples to teach students different techniques. In my opinion most of these problems tend to be easier than homework and test problems. The reason is because the teachers want to see if the students really understand the material and can apply it to different types of problems. Most of the time students may get stuck on problems and don’t necessarily have the right approach in getting help. Before emailing the teacher or anything try to figure out a way to get the help you need on a question. What I mean by this is to try to go over examples the teacher discussed or look over the notes. If that doesn’t work try to find a solution online and make sure you know how to ask the right question. In my opinion you should start off broad and then get more specific. If you can’t find the solution, I would ask a friend for help because someone may know the answer and all you need to do is ask. If no one can help you I would post the question on stack exchange or stack overflow. If all else fails then I would go to the teacher for help. Notice how going to the teacher is last It is important to use all resources available to you before going to the teacher. In this stack overflow question,the person asking the question does a great job of asking a smart question. He displays pictures of two different JavaScript code he wrote. They ask why one-way works over another. This is smart because he is specific with the question. They don’t just ask why his second picture doesn’t work, but actually gives an example of a picture that works. This shows that he or she cares on the reason why one works over another. The answers are also smart answers because responders are able to give specific answers on why one works over another. For example, one response talked about how “in ES5 of JavaScript you couldn’t use a variable as a property name inside an object literal, but in ES6 you can.” Ask you can see, when you ask smart questions, you will get smart answers.
Stupid Question?
Like I mentioned above, there are also questions that are not very smart. Many of these questions do not involve learning or very little learning. A great example is just posting your homework problem and asking how to do it. In these cases, the community views these people as selfish and “losers”, like I said above. The person asking the question does not care about learning or solving the problem. All they want is the solution. In most cases, these solutions do not get answered because the community does not want to do other people’s work. The community wants to assist people and help them learn the material. When they help people out, eventually the people that use to be asking the questions are the ones helping answer them. In this stack overflow question, you can see the person just asked how to solve the problem. They posted the entire code and gave the specific instructions on what needed to get done. This post has no responses yet. Even though the post may have been posted recently, I expect either no solutions or people not helping much. The reason is because the question asked was not smart and the user shows he or she does not really care about learning the material. # After reading the article By Eric S. Raymond, I learned about how to ask questions the right way. I didn’t realize there were steps to asking the right questions. I was always taught that there were not such things as dumb questions, now I know better. I was able to see how to ask questions properly and making sure its specific. I can really apply this to my learning now because I know the correct procedure for asking a smart question. I can’t be afraid to ask questions on these sites when I am stuck, because asking the right question the right way opens doors to more knowledge.