Smart questions? What is that?
Alexander Hung

Smart questions? What is that?

25 Jan 2023

4W of asking smart questions

“When”

Have you ever wondered when you typically need to ask someone a question or help? Have you tried it on your own before you ask a question? Because many people lose their way because they rely too much on asking for help, the time and process of asking questions are not what we think of as “just asking questions,” but usually, students ask questions that can be hinted at from questions or mistakes. So when you ask a question, are you looking for the right answer rather than a correct guide? When someone is willing to answer your question, the answerer is more interested in learning from their response than helping you “do your homework.” Because this is not productive for learning, after getting an answer, do you find that you have earned enough explanation or any additional questions you need to ask? “You are not; you aren’t, after all, paying for the service.”(Eric, 2014). The questions you ask will help yourself and not others, much less the answerer. So please save the time they are paying for you because of your mistakes.

“Where”

We all know how we will seek help as a student; yes, we have professors to help and more professors in other majors to help. But where will we go to find people who can help us with our programming? The answer is stack overflow and other internet platforms. We can ask on Stack Exchange; we can Google if our problem has been solved. If not, we can narrow down the results using tags or keywords on the site. The arrows in the Q&A can help you find the best answer. The Stack Exchange site contains many other platforms and operating system-specific sites. However, Stack Exchange is one of many places you can go for help; some web and IRC forums are also good places to ask questions. But please follow their rules.

“What”

So, what is the smart question? First, you need a title, preferably at most 50 characters. It is essential that this subject heading makes sense. This title must get straight to the point because it will attract people to help you. After all, when they see the title, others can know if they are capable of helping you instead. And other titles that beat around the bush, such as: Help me fix my code, it doesn't work. This title will only prevent others from simply understanding what problem you are experiencing. And this title: What is a NullPointerException, and how do I fix it? is a good title.

You then need to provide the necessary information accurately：

In more detail, in addition to the most basic assurance of grammatical correctness, you need to be more detailed to give the most basic information the respondent needs (no other useless details are required). For example, you don’t need to send all your hundreds of lines of code when asking for code. Last is to observe the most basic network etiquette; communication in the network and the actual communication are the same.

Good: I accidentally committed the wrong files to Git, but didn't push the commit to the server yet. How do I undo those commits from the local repository? Source: How do I undo the most recent local commits in Git?

Bad: I want to install a piece of hardware on my computer, but I can't do it. This is very urgent, please help me?

“Why”

Finally, why should we follow these “rules”? Because when we seek questions, we don’t give anything to the person who answers in return. Like the ancient Chinese who sought to learn, we must respect each other and ask politely because only relentless effort will be rewarded, even when you ask for help. And it is because you ask for help you must abide by what we often call “morality.”