Being smart
29 Jan 2020
As software engineers, we will face many challenges in our study or work. One way to solve these problems is that ask other outstanding software engineers like our co-workers or teachers. Knowing how to ask questions smart is very helpful for us to get assistance. In my opinion, asking a smart question will be much more efficient.
Bad Question
Asking a bad question may cause inconvenience for both the asker and the helper. If the question is not clear, no one can answer it clearly. Here is an example of poor ask skills on StackOverflow. A guy posted a question without any clear description but only a question that how to make his code work, and then he attached his code. He did not state that what is this code suppose to do and what kind of error he got while debugging. Therefore, the helpers have to read his code carefully and try to run his code to see what goes wrong. Fortunately, some users found his error that using the wrong variable name and helped him to solve the question. However, this bad question creates a lot of inconvenience for helpers and makes them answer the question without efficiency.
Smart Question
On the other way, asking a smart question can help askers get help more quickly. If the question is clear enough, the helpers can directly offer their help to the problem. There are many smart questions on StackOverflow and here is a great instance of them. The question is about counting positive elements and negative elements from a given string. The asker offered his thought about the problem and attached his code, then he also states the error he got which is the code creates an infinite loop. Comparing to the bad example above, this question was described very clearly. The result is that he got the answer immediately. I think a smart question can help askers to get help efficiently.
In conclusion, asking a smart question is very important for software engineers. It can help us to get help efficiently and to communicate with others well. I have learned that asking a smart question with a clear description and standard formats can help us get help and learn more knowledge from the asking.
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