The Art of Asking
When it comes to the online community of coders, programmers, and developers alike, finding help from others is a crucial part of learning and creating new things. After reading through Eric Raymond’s “How To Ask Questions The Smart Way”, it gives a new perspective on the importance of presenting yourself effectively in said communities. This is essential so that you ensure you get optimal benefit from responses. Raymond goes over very practical topics such as being precise, making your problem easy to reply to, or describing your symptoms, not your guesses. But most importantly I wanted to discuss the application of his Idea of smart vs not so smart questions
For example I have pulled two separate questions posed by recent users on the website. In the first source we have a user who has an issue with something a little confusing, which already leads into why it may not be the smartest question. We can see that this question is sloppy and hard to look at. It is also very unorganized and hard to look at. Most importantly it overall something hard to answer for anyone who would want to help. A huge hub for such things would be Stack overflow. If we look here Not so smart question. We see that the user uses a lot of emotion, guesses, and simply did not look like he spent a lot of time on it.
On the other hand, let’s look at a better crafted question that probably had much better results. Smart question. Immediately you see how there is a direct title with, in text code references. We see how it is neatly organized and explains the issue. It also provides examples and has a much more professional tone, with no emotions of frustration added. The stark differences between these two sources is very obvious. The difference in tone, format, readiblities, and professionalism clearly define the difference between a smart way of asking a question and a not so smart way of asking it.
Cited Raymond, Eric Steven. “How To Ask Questions The Smart Way.” How to Ask Questions the Smart Way, How To Ask Questions The Smart Way, Link.