In software engineering, asking questions is one of the most important things when it comes to communicating with your fellow members whenever you’re working on a project, solution and other things. Smart questions are always valid and important in the industry, and we should all be able to help one another and help those who need to better themselves in asking smart questions. After looking through “How To Ask Questions The Smart Way”, Eric Steven Raymond gave perfect examples of how to ask smart questions or bad questions.
Asking smart questions, ables us to help understand the problem and would make it a lot easier for the person to answer. For example, Eric Steven Raymond says that, “If you give us an interesting question to chew on we’ll be grateful to you; good questions are a stimulus and a gift. Good questions help us develop our understanding, and often reveal problems we might not have noticed or thought about otherwise”. For example, “What’s the difference between compiled and interpreted language?”. This is a perfect example of a smart question because it’s something that can help us and provide context, and specific information to get a detailed answer.
Asking not so smart questions can really confuse the person that tries to answer the question. It doesn’t give context and will not get a detailed answer. For example, my code doesn’t work (php) [duplicate]. This is a bad question because it confuses us thinking, “Why doesn’t it work?”, “Is there an error in your code?”, “What’s the code about?”, and many more questions to ask why it doesn’t work. It can be hard for us to answer the question even though we’re willing to help those. Also, another example is guessing your question. Don’t think about your question, it’s either you know what’s wrong with your question that you’re asking or you don’t. Saying, “I think my google chrome is installed but I’m not sure”, confuses the person who’s trying to answer that question. Eric Steven Raymond says, “It’s not useful to tell hackers what you think is causing your problem.” Don’t be shy and tell them what’s wrong instead of your theories of what’s wrong.
After reviewing between “Smart Questions” and “Not So Smart Questions”, we can obviously see that “Smart Questions” is the way to go. I would admit, I know the feeling of asking questions because you feel that people will judge you quick or maybe you don’t want to sound “dumb” but I truly believe that if you take the time to ask “Smart Questions” then you will be just fine. It’s very important for us to ask smart questions, because we can get detailed information. “Smart Questions” can draw people’s attention which they want to help you and answer your question.