In a field that’s always changing, it’s important to always have a positive attitude toward learning new things and being able to adapt to the technical skills and languages needed for this job. We’ve all seen how much Computer Science has evolved over the years and how new coding languages have become the new environment for the tech world. With a positive outlook on needing to learn, a person working in the tech field must also learn how to ask smart questions to learn efficiently.
Now what’s considered a smart question? Well, Raymond says that you should always ask the right person. This means someone who is experienced with the topic of the question. They are credible and may even be able to help you directly. Now with the actual question at hand, you should make sure that you are providing as much information regarding the question for the person to be able to help you. This means providing as much context as you can. This could mean providing the entire section of code, instead of the specific line you are asking help for. Or providing basic information like what coding language it is for someone to give you an accurate answer. It may seem obvious for some languages to be distinct, but most languages are similar in syntax for the most basic things, such as declaring an instance or a class.
One example of a smart question is from JSchaefer. They asked what was the difference between HTML div and span elements. They provided a little description stating that they’ve seen it used in the same scenarios, and looks like they do the exact same thing but wanted to know when is it better to use one over the other. This was a smart question because the person isn’t technically trying to get a yes or no answer but seeing how experts differentiate between the two elements, and many people loved his question, providing multiple answers, some being visuals, others explanations. This type of question, based on the provided context, showed that they weren’t asking for the obvious answer but for advice.
Link for “Smart” Question Example: Stack Overflow Link
Raymond also discusses a “not so smart” way to ask questions. The first thing he recommends doing is to check other options for answers. This could be a friend, an advisor, a book, or checking online to see if someone has already asked about your question. He also said that you could even try experimenting first. Experimenting might sound ridiculous, but with coding, it isn’t. As we all know, we were always told that everyone has their own style of code. That just means there’s always another way to do something, another method to write out the code. So experimenting is always an option, and for many of us, it was always a syntax error like forgetting to add the closing statement.
For a “not so smart” question by EbilGenius, they wanted to know how to embed a Javascript file in a body tag and provided the line they tried adding the file to. According to Raymond, this is one of the many questions on Stack Overflow that is considered “not so smart.” This wasn’t the best question because this question was most likely answered previously or even shown in a Javascript/HTML syntax manual. As I feel like this person is definitely doing this code for a class or work, they could’ve also asked a classmate or coworker first instead of waiting for the internet to solve it for them. Another thing that I noticed was how they only provided the line with the file source code. This could always be a problem as there are many times when the expert will not know what to do because the error wasn’t in the line provided but somewhere else. That’s why in many questions shown in Stack Overflow, there are many replies asking the person to provide the entire code. In their question, they asked how to embed a file without a head tag. We know this person is asking because their current code is not working. It would’ve been “smart” to provide the error code and at least how the outline for where the script line was in. That way, the expert could help solve the problem if it was due to formatting errors or another issue. Although the person was lucky that someone still answered the question, it was a general answer teaching the person about the format for HTML.
Link for “Not So Smart” Question Example: Stack Overflow Link
Source: How to Ask Questions the Smart Way by Eric Steven Raymond