Asking A Good Question
06 Sep 2018Introduction
In the essay called “How to Ask Questions the Smart Way”, by Eric Raymond, the author discusses techniques and ettiquette when asking questions on web forums. He discusses what makes a question a ‘good’ question, and how to avoid asking ‘bad’ questions.
[Good] questions are a stimulus and a gift. Good questions help us develop our understanding, and often reveal problems we might not have noticed or thought about otherwise. - Eric Raymond
Additionally, he lists what to do before you ask, how to ask the question, and how to handle replies and responses. Using his criteria, I picked out two questions from Stack Overflow. One question is good, and one is bad. I’ll discuss why I think they’re good or bad, based on what I learned from reading Raymond’s essay.
The Good Question
On August 9th, 2018, Stack Overflow user Serj Ardovic asked the below question:
I believe this question to be an example of what Eric Raymond considers a ‘good’ question. Off the bad, I was intrigued. Hoew can Java’s util.Random function equate 52! possibilities if it only has 2^64 memory space? It’s already helping develop my understanding of physical constraints in programming, and I haven’t even read the answer yet. It’s also obvious that Serj did some background research before asking this question, otherwise how would he have known that util.Random doesn’t have enough space?
I’m not the only one that thinks this is a good question. A few comments on Stack Overflow open with showing appreciation for asking such a thought-provoking question. Discussion is initiated, problem-solving begins, and the question thread is an abundance of great learning material. Asking this question helped him get enough information to satisfy him, and also gave the community something to think about and discuss. Great question Serj!
The Bad Question
On the other side of the coin, however, I found an example of a not-so-great question.
As you can see, the answer is a simple typo found on the line with the switch statement. If the poster just asked a friend or colleage, or looked up the error message on Google first, the question wouldn’t be necessary. This question lacks preparation. Not only that, but he’s asking for someone else to give him the full solution, instead of asking for someone to explain how he can fix it himself. The question provided nothing to the community. In fact, the community deemed the question to be so bad, that the issue was closed two hours after it was posted and labeled as “Off-Topic”. Perhaps next time, the poster will first do his own research and read Eric Raymond’s essay before making the same mistake.
Conclusion
Overall, I thought that Eric Raymond’s essay was very informative, and prepared me for asking questions on internet forums. I’ll be sure to use Serj’s post as an example, and remember the second post as a reason why asking good questions is important!