Importance of Asking Smart Questions
29 Jan 2025What Is a Smart Question
With coding becoming more popular every day, more and more questions are being asked. However, how we ask these questions matters. Asking smart questions helps the person answering provide a much better response than if you ask a vague or overly simple question. How do we do this? We can start by checking whether the question has already been answered through the web, forums, books, or by asking a peer in your class or work environment. You should also make sure you are asking the right people for the job—you wouldn’t ask a plumber how to fix your television. Additionally, ensure that your questions are informative and precise. If you ask vague questions, you may end up exchanging multiple messages instead of getting a clear answer from the start. Avoid typing in ALL CAPS, as it is often seen as shouting and may cause others to ignore your message. Being polite also helps—adding a simple “please” can go a long way. Clearly explain your situation and provide all the necessary details so the person answering can respond quickly and effectively. Show that you have already put effort into solving the problem. For example, instead of just sending code and saying, “It doesn’t work,” explain what you are trying to accomplish, what errors or unexpected results you are seeing, and what troubleshooting steps you have already taken. By following these guidelines, you will improve your chances of getting helpful responses while also being respectful of others’ time.
A Good Example of a Smart Question
This question that I have found is from Stack Overflow, a website where many questions about programming and software devlopment are asked every day. I am showing this question because I believe it is a great example on how smart questions should be asked.
In this example you can see that the person asking the question is telling a story on what he is trying to make and also some of the steps that he has taken to try to fix the problem. The person also admits that he is struggling with a way to word the question and if the person answering has any questions to please ask him so he can do his best to answer them. He also shows that he wants to learn more and asks for better ways that it can be coded as well.
You can see that the questioner also walks through the code with them and explains the problems. I believe taht this was very well put together in all aspects. This was a smart question due to the amount of work he put in before asking the question and also how he put his question together as well.
A Not So Smart Question
This next question that I am showing is the wrong way on how to ask questions.
You can see that the person asking the question did not give an explanation on any of the processes that they went through. Also, they just posted their code and showed the error and asked why did they get the error and asked how to fix it. The person asking the question did not go through the steps they took to even try to solve the problem. According to the essay, “How To Ask Questions The Smart Way”, written by Eric Steven Raymond, people like this are lazy sponges and waste other people’s time.
Conclusion
In conclusion, asking smart questions is a lot more helpful when you are in a bind and it will help you and the person answering be a lot more efficient in figuring out the problem you are struggling with. Also learning now about how to ask questions will help you further down in life to sound more professional, and will help you to communicate a lot better in a working environment so that you could be more efficient and get things done quicker when projects come up. It helped me a lot learnning about asking smart questions and I will keep this in mind when I am having trouble in my coding and problems in the future.
This Essay was edited using chatGPT