A “bad” question.
A “good” question.
Smart questions are important for software engineers because the process of learning and development is evergrowing due to the sheer amount of problems that they will face over time. There will be difficult questions that will take up significant amounts of time and this can lead to inefficiencies in use of time when developing a program if the question deals with something of a rather small and isolated scope that even those that aren’t working on your project can analyze and get a hold of the problem at hand. Luckily, there are online forums available that dedicate themselves to answering other peoples’ questions in order to help them solve a problem. However, in order to receive effective answers and comments from the community, the individual that is asking the question must be concise and show intent that they are willing to learn rather than simply take answers.
The “bad” question that I have listed shows a lack of the precepts needed in order to be labeled a “smart” question, according to Eric Raymond - author of “How To Ask Questions The Smart Way”. The question is difficult to answer because the user starts off the post listing a bunch of problems they had run into without proper explanation or details. The poster then proceeds to ask a number of vague questions some of which can be easily researched online. The response, as I have last checked, has only one response which directed the user to a tutorial instead of answering all their questions. Overall, this may have helped the user by pointing them in the right direction, but it would have probably been faster if the poster conducted research beforehand, which is a key factor in asking a smart question.
The “good” question that I have listed makes use of many of the precepts needed in a smart question and it is apparent when looking at the comments that arose from it that this question was effective in gaining effective responses. For one, the poster provides a visual view of the problem that they are encountering and its output. Their statements are also short and concise and this makes the question a lot easier to be answered. The poster also shows knowledge on the topic at hand because they provided insight on different ways they tried to work on the problem. Overall, the quality of the responses were quite good and the top comment was very detailed in their explanation towards answering the questions. This was possible because the question was smart and didn’t leave any room for ambiguity. Their mannerism was also significantly different from the other example and seemed a lot more professional.
From looking at these questions, I have realized that the difference between a smart and a dumb question can seem rather miniscule, but the difference between the results they get are significant. However, I don’t think posting dumb questions makes an individual a dumb person, but allows for the person asking to learn from the experience and analyze what went wrong. Anonymity on the internet is a powerful tool, but one must also be wary of how to interact with other netizens in order to properly interact with resources such as forums. In the end, I find that asking smart questions can be difficult because it is easy to fall into casuality and someone can easily forget that they are asking questions in an environment dense with professionals.