Ask Smart Questions To Get Awesome Responses
07 Sep 2022
You can gain more knowledges by asking smart questions!
Be smart, ask questions in a smart way
A question submitted by Rosghub follows the precepts established by Raymond in a smart way. When we are writing a subject header, we want to attract the attention of experts by making it meaningful and specific. We can write our subject headers in a way using “object - deviation,” which helps us to think about our problem in depth. Rosghub’s subject header is “Why does C++ code for testing the Collatz conjecture run faster than hand-written assembly?” and this definitely showed an “object - deviation.” The “object” part is the runtime between C++ code and hand-written assembly. The “deviation” part is C++ code runs faster.
There are some conditions that can make our questions “smart.” We should send our questions in accessible, standard formats so it is easier for others to read. It’s also very important to be precise and informative about our problem so others can understand our problem in detail. When we are describing our problems, it’s important to not guess what might cause the problem, but describe the symptoms of what goes wrong. Rosghub did a great job and fulfilled all these conditions that I had listed from Raymond. Rosghub shows its code and how he or she assembled and compiled the code. Rosghub did some testing and showed that the hand-written assembly is taking on average 1 second longer than C++. Rosghub also included the execution times with the system that he or she is using. As Rosghub fulfilled these conditions, he or she had received many great responses from many experts. The responses are not short, but long because it has a lot of detailed explanations. A lot of the answers show considerations and suggestions to questions along with many helpful links. I’m amazed that more than 900 people voted that Rosghub’s question shows “research effort as it is useful and clear.” I’m even more amazed that one of the answers has more than 2000 votes for “helpful.”
Here is a link to the question that I choose from StackOverflow that demonstrates the “smart way”
The results of asking questions in a “not so smart way”
A question submitted by RonnebladA demonstrates the not so smart way. RonnebladA’s subject header is “Please help me with Unity3D.” According to Raymond, messages with “Please help me” will get discarded by reflex. While reading RonnebladA’s question, I have noticed some simple punctuation and grammatical errors. Some words are not capitalized correctly or have forgotten apostrophes. It is important to express our questions clearly and precisely or else others might not pay attention to our questions.
When our questions are not smart, it’s likely that we might not get a response or just a very few responses. The responses might not be even the answer that we want. There is only one response for RonnebladA’s question and the response is really short. Oistikbal was the one who answered the RonnebladA’s question with a suggestion. RonnebladA replied and it seems the answer or suggestion does not work as intended. Oistikbal replied again with another suggestion. If RonnebladA had given more details about his question or code, he might have received a better answer.
Here is a link to the question that I choose from StackOverflow that demonstrates the “not so smart way”
Insights from asking smart questions
Knowing and being able to ask smart questions is beneficial to everyone. While asking smart questions, we can gain deeper understanding of our own questions and even gain more knowledge by reading the answers or responses to our questions. For software engineers, asking smart questions is even more important because it’s a skill to help them to communicate well with each other.
Here is a link to Raymond if you want to learn more about “How To Ask Questions The Smart Way”