As I started my journey learning to program, I learned that asking good questions often leads to good answers. I often found myself copying and pasting code errors into google hoping to find some solutions when the solution was right in the error message. Learning how to read error messages helped me to fix my code and learn from my mistakes. However, some problems I could never quite fix. This led to frustration, coding fatigue, and even a loss of interest in the project I was working on. Eager to fix my coding problems, I thought copying and pasting code snippets or error messages was a quick way of getting help from others. This turned out to be completely false. Not only did I find it difficult to get replies, but most of the replies I got were for clarification.
Reading through Eric Raymond’s “How to ask questions the smart way” gave me a step by step guideline to asking smart questions. I will analyze a few questions asked by developers on a popular programming forum - Stack Overflow - to see if asking smart questions leads to both efficient and effective help. Looking at questions recently asked on Stack Overflow, I came across a user who had an error with their python code. The header for this forum post is “what is wrong with my code, and I am new to python”. Right away I was curious to see how others responded to this post. This post did not follow a lot of the guidelines posted in Eric’s article. For example, the post was not clear about a specific problem and it did not give any additional information about the environment such as what version of python was being used. The post also seemed to have a mismatch of line numbers from the posted code and the error message. This could cause confusion for other developers trying to help. The post was downvoted 4 times and most of the replies did not give a direct answer.
A developer on Stack Overflow asked a question with the header “Unity3d: rotate camera around center of the screen with middle mouse button pressed”. The header alone gives information about the tool that they are using while also giving information about the goal that the developer is trying to achieve. Eric stated that when asking a quesiton, it is smart to not assume that the current technique you are using is the right one. In other words, let people help guide you in the right direction instead of asking people to help you do things your way. The Stack Overflow question also gives more information about what type of game was being worked on, and gave some example about what other methods have attempted to solve the problem. I believe that this question was formatted in a way that will lead to more success finding help online. This turned out to be true since the question was answered quickly and effectively. The developer who asked the question gave feedback that the solution worked out great. This forum post may be viewed by many others who had a similar question and could possibly be of help to them.
In conclusion, by analyzing these “smart” and “not so smart” questions, I was able to observe that asking smart questions could lead to more efficient and effective solutions. I will keep in mind the guidelines that Eric outlined as I ask questions online.