Ever since the start of my academic career, I have always avoided questions out of fear of looking dumb in front of the class. “Seriously? You don’t know that? You should know that by now already.” Eventually, I learned that if you have a question, more often than not, other students in the class will have the same question. Other than fear, I had an irrational dislike for relying on others, so I would often spend unproductive hours looking for an answer that’s impossible to find on my own instead of sucking it up and asking for help. Because of this, most of my questions were either left unanswered or were miraculously asked by another student. Rather than keeping questions to myself, I grew to discuss questions with students or bring it to the teacher in private. I still haven’t gotten to the stage of asking in front of everyone, but I’ll get there eventually. That is where anonymity, forums, and StackOverflow come in.
If you’re afraid of asking questions in real life, ask questions online. StackOverflow is a question-and-answer website specifically for developers and programmers. Asking questions IRL, while being more effective than online, can be a pain: talking to people, fear of looking dumb, being outside. Especially in these trying times, asking online is much more preferable. Asking online grants anonymity, so the risk of looking unknowledgeable is gone. However, anonymity is a double edged sword. It also allows the user to ask the most outrageous question nonchalantly. In Raymond’s “How To Ask Questions The Smart Way,” he discusses the steps one needs to take in order to ask a smart question.
One such question is this: “Why is processing a sorted array faster than processing an unsorted array?” At face value, this question is clear, concise, and presents the reader their dilemma. While the question itself does not exude intelligence, the way the user formulated the presentation of their problem was “smart.” The user prefaces their issue with code and their thoughts about the code to show that they are somewhat capable and are not asking blindly. The user also talks about their prior troubleshooting, seeing if the issue was apparent throughout different languages. This shows that the user put some effort into solving their own problem and is not relying entirely on StackOverflow and its patrons. Asking others first, using a human resource, about a question that can be solved with a simple Google search or a simple fix can be seen as selfish so, when asking a question, see if it has already been solved.
While there is no such thing as a “stupid” question, you can ask a question in a stupid way. That is, doing the opposite of asking a smart question: being unclear of your issue, giving no details for kind users to work with, not trying to solve the issue yourself. One such question is this: “I had used usb but its still showing that device not found.” At first glance, poor grammar on a seemingly professional site might make users less inclined to help you out, as well as asking a non-coding question on a coding-focused Q&A site. Getting that out of the way, the post is filled with nothing but a hyperlink, with default text, to a screenshot and a demand to the user,”Check it out.” This question, while it does clearly tell the reader the issue at hand, does not give any details such as prior troubleshooting that the user has done. While the user may have already done the most obvious fixes (in this case, using a different USB cable, port, etc.), the reader does not know that and might assume the user is not worth helping out.
When asking a question, it is very important to get your issue across to the reader while providing as much details as possible to avoid any confusion. Your question should not sound like a desperate call for help, but rather a request that invites others to answer.