Smart Questions
30 Aug 2017
Smart Questions?
There is the old saying said by Carl Sagan “There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question”. I believe that this quote is true, that there are no dumb questions. So what is a smart question? Well the way I think of it is that a smart question is a question that is asked the smart way. So what is a smart way to ask questions? After reading How to ask questions the smart way by Eric Raymound, I think that asking a question in a informative and concise way, as well as showing in your question that you put effort in trying to solving the problem using different resources available to you, is what asking a smart question is.
The Smart Way
Here is an example of a smart question. The header of the question is on point and short. The question shows that developer had gone through documentations and resources online to solve the problem but still couldn’t solve it. The developer has shown that he/she can think for themselves and had done research and tried to understand but still couldn’t solve the problem. The developer also pastes the documentation used and code example to better illustrate the problem. It also states the end goal, that the developer wants to understand “Why do generic methods and generic types have different type introduction syntax?”. Which is good that it’s actually the header of the question. Also the answers show how this is a smart question. Many of the answers show how thought provoking the question was and that some had to go in to much detail in order to solve it. The developer also asked follow up question to the top answer in which a solid answer was developed for. This shows the enthusiam and the communication being done in the community thread.
The Not So Smart Way
Here is an example of the not so smart way. First off, the developer doesn’t even show any sign in his/her question that he/she tried to solve the problem before asking the question. I googled the same question and came up with a manual and documentation regarding the very same problem. This shows that this developer is lazy and doesn’t want to actually think. The developer also didn’t give any relevant information on what the problem is. He/she didn’t give any type of code and or any effort trying to debug it. Even though this is a question that is easy to answer the fact it is easy to look up and find the answer yourself shows that question was not smart. It is understandable that the developer might have already known the answer but didn’t quite understand but the fact that he/she didn’t state it in the question proves the point that this question was not asked smart way.
The Conclusion
In this day and age, a lot of people are busy and have lives including hackers. So save them the trouble by reading How to ask questions the smart way and don’t be afraid to ask questions. There are no dumb questions but there are dumb ways to to ask questions.