Questioning our Questions
25 Jan 2018“Every Question is a Good Question”
“Never be afraid to ask questions” is a phrase I’ve always heard in classrooms to help those that don’t understand to seek help when they need it. But sometimes the questions asked aren’t the most useful for discussion and are probably better off not being asked. Those questions generally relate to topics that the asker should already know, such as when a professor assigns a reading about Shakespeare’s life. A question you should probably be in fact afraid about asking is, “Who is Shakespeare?” Maybe your professor will act generous and give you an answer, but on other mediums like online forums or emails, the potential responder will most likely view these simple and easy-to-look-up questions as a waste of their time. Thus, we shouldn’t be afraid to ask questions, but we should put thought and effort into our questions to show potential responders that you aren’t wasting their time with something you could have figured out yourself.
Effort leads to more effort
It’s imperative to ask smart questions, because it not only helps others narrow down what your solution is, you may also find yourself finding your own solution when trying to figure out how to ask abput your problem. We don’t want to just ask some silly question like, “Why doesn’t my code work?” and expect other people to baby us and give us the solution. When deciding what to ask, we can narrow the scope of our code to isolate the problem, which can lead us toward finding our own solution. And even then, the internet is there for us to search up potential solutions for our problems before we even ask others. We should learn how to find solutions via searching the internet (which should almost always be the first thing you do when you have a question, hence the usually sassy remark, “Just Google it”). For example, this developer posted on StackOverflow a question for a possible solution to his problem. The developer removes certain lines from his code to isolate where the problem stems from, and then gives out all pertaining files to give responders the information for a solution. Not only does someone give him a hefty solution to his problem, the developer even manages to find his own solution after reviewing his code.
If you tell them not to do it, they’ll do it
Meanwhile, another developer on StackOverflow possibly didn’t do enough research on his own to ask a smart question. In the responses, we can see people clearly saying, “You’re doing it wrong,” and “Git doesn’t work like that,” which shows the developer didn’t do enough research to understand his problem is occuring. It may have been better to ask if there exists a solution for his specific problem, instead of asking what IS the solution and telling responders not to tell him he’s “doing it wrong.” Figuring out the smart version of his question may have led him to the solution by himself, or at least saved him many responders giving him sassy responses like “You’re doing it wrong.”
Exhaust our own options before relying on others
After learning about how to ask smart questions, I’ve realized there is a lot of work put into asking one. Asking a smart question means making sure you understand the basics with the manual and searching the internet for possible solutions to your problem before having others answer your question. It’s a lot of work, but if I searched and pondered over my problem and couldn’t find a solution, I would hope someone else could by giving them all my code and steps I took to help them solve it as quickly as possible. If I simply asked a question without putting in my own effort, responders would need to search for a solution starting from where I could have looked, which wastes their time and is rude for someone lending a helping hand. Looking at these example questions helped me learn that we have to question if we put enough research before asking our question.