help i have problem
25 Jan 2023
Some Questions Are Good
Learning how to ask smart questions is an important skill to know in multiple professions, software engineering being one of them. Asking a smart question will usually lead to a smart answer, while a stupid question will lead to a stupid answer. Asking what a boolean is? A stupid question, you can Google it. Asking if a boolean can be applied in a situation involving multiple processes and a database to decrease CPU usage and increase the program’s speed after finding no results on the web regarding it? Slightly less stupid, you can get some ideas from other people.
some questions put me in a bad mood
While searching through stackOverflow for questions, I came across a perfect example of how exactly to not ask a question. Asked 3 minutes ago, tagged with javascript, python, c#, c++, and c from a user with 0 prior activity. They asked about creating a program in c (yes that was the title) and proceeded to copy and paste what seemed to be a homework assignment. Their only words of context for this problem was, “I don’t know make it’s because i’m beginer in program c languege.”
This type of question would be much more suitable for homework solving forums such as Chegg, not on stackOverflow. The question had only one comment which asked about the tags. Some ways to improve this question could be to provide an example of where they currently are in the process, some lines of code would help. I also think it would be important to not pose the question as a homework problem, but instead as a point in which they got stuck and would need some assistance. Here is a link to the question.
Some Questions Make Me Happy
While searching through stackOverflow for questions, again, I came across a perfect example of how exactly to ask a question. Asked 17 days ago, tagged with r, and ggplot2 from a user with a lot of prior activity (top 6% in reputation this year). They asked about ordering values on an x-axis. Seems simple enough right? Not according to this user. They found a solution that involves changing the x-values manually but they could not find any references on how to automatically correct them, most likely to help them out in future projects with bigger data sets. To assist with anyone that wants to help, they provided code for how they got the data, how the data was manipulated, and how the plot was created. They also clearly stated what they wanted and other alternative solutions they’ve tried.
This question gathered only 3 answers, but they were all very well written and went in-depth to how they would solve the problem, with code examples and explanations at each level. These types of solutions would not have existed if the user simply asked how to automatically sort x-values in ggplot2, as many of the code examples derive from the original code the user provided. Here is a link to the question
Sometimes Make It Snappy
The best answers I’ve found go in-depth just enough to provide a solution to the given problem, but would need further research to apply further. It acts as a stepping stone to give you enough information but won’t solve all your problems. I used to write long emails to my professor explaining every part of a problem I had when I could just give a few sentences and get the same response. I was trying to make a smart question to a stupid answer. You don’t need to tell the professor you looked the syllabus up and down 3 times already, just ask for a clarification. On the other hand, conceptual problems and things you may have asked during the lectures may need a smart question for a smart answer. There’s always a time and place for a smart question, and one for a stupid question.