As software developers, we often encounter roadblocks that hinder our progress in writing code. In such situations, seeking assistance from others becomes essential to overcome these obstacles and regain our momentum. To maximize the chances of receiving helpful and informative responses, it is crucial to ask smart questions. As Eric Steven Raymond highlights in his essay ‘How To Ask Questions The Smart Way,’ smart questions are characterized by clarity, precision, and respectfulness. Ensuring that your questions embody these qualities is key to obtaining efficient and effective answers, thereby facilitating our continuous improvement in the field.
An example question could look like this: In essence the person made a fork of a github repository and is having trouble with pull requests. They provided their steps in attempting to solve the problem and gave context of what he did. The person was also respectful when asking the question. These are reasons as to why people spent time to answer their question.
This question does not follow Raymonds Guidelines and will probably not receive any meaningful feedback. This question states that they have a problem with APIkeys and provides their source code and error they receive. They failed to provide insight as to what the code is doing and the purpose of his post. They lacked clarity and failed to provide details of what’s happening. Which is why the post is not a smart question.
Learning how to ask smart questions not only impacts your own problem-solving but also benefits those who assist you. Smart questions not only facilitate efficient problem-solving but also foster a culture of continuous learning and collaboration within the software development community. This approach ultimately enhances your understanding of the problem at hand and equips you to address similar issues in the future more effectively.