Dumb Questions Create Dumber Answers
10 Sep 2020What Seperates A Smart Question?
One important thing I have learned since studying computer science is the importance of being able to effectively search and find your own resources and answers for yourself. The ideas in computer programming can sometimes be very abstract and depend on a solid background of understanding to be able to build on. But once you fall behind a little, it can be hard to pick yourself up to go on learning new things. Googling and finding various online resources can be the best way to help strengthen your understanding of different or new concepts. For me, it has been an effective way of answering questions or finding application of new concepts when what I learned in class was not clear enough for me. But, more important than knowing where to look, is knowing what to ask.
With computer science and coding being so abstract in theory, it can be hard to just Google and find the answer you’re looking for. So knowing how to ask and where to ask is extremely important for anyone working with software engineering. Knowing how to ask a properly worded question can help you get a clear answer more efficiently because the more easier and understandable the question is, the more likely someone will read it and want to respond.
As said by Eric Raymond in his guidelines for “How to ask questions the smart way,” the first step into asking a smart question is first research your question through different resources and make sure the answer isn’t found anywhere else. With Google and other online resources being universally accessible, if you ask a question which would have been easily found elsewhere you won’t get an answer you’re looking for. He notes that this leaves the impression that you just want an easy answer and won’t put any work into it, I have personally felt the same. When I first started learning Java, when I met a problem, I would always go to Google first to find an answer because what I was asking was very trivial. So when other peers ask me similar questions which could be answered by a quick Google search, it leaves me with a bit of annoyance because they would rather depend on someone else to work and provide answers than work for themselves.
Another important factor in asking a proper question is the working and message. It needs to be clear and concise, while also being interesting and well written so it appeals to others who see your question. Simple things like incorrect grammar, incoherent sentences, or unclear headers can push others away from even looking at a question. An important part of this is having a question which tells the reader exactly what is wrong, when you don’t know what the problem is, you can’t give an answer.
One example of a question which could be better written is found here on StackOverflow. The title reads “What is a java.net.URLConnecion doing?” This question is asking why when they use this methods to connect a URL to a program, it is not displaying the connected URL. This question is not good because it asks something that could be answered when just Googling the use of the method they are using. The comments of the post reply with comments abouts how they should learn more about how HTTP and HTML works, duplicate question which was previously asked, and that they should just learn more about their used method in general. They should have looked and Googled their problem before and done some research first before just posting a question.
A better question along the same topic is found here and titled “How to use hava.net.URLConnection to fire and handle HTTP requests?” This question states that there are other resources that cover this, but they want to learn more in depth on the uses and applications of the function. The responses they received are more detailed and show examples and possible uses for the function they asked about. They are also providing steps towards implementing this and other resources to learn more about it. Here, even though the question and message isn’t worded the best, they provided insight as to why they did not like the resources they found from prior research and stated exactly what they wanted to learn more about. And in return, they got a more elaborate and effective answer as to the prior question.
From looking at these two, you can easily see the importance as to what makes a good question and why it is important to ask smart questions. For software engineering, we are met constantly with new things and problems we do not know how to solve by ourselves, so it is important to be able to ask questions and find answers in an effective way so we are able to overcome roadblocks.