Smart Questions

07 Sep 2017

---

I am a firm believer that to be a successful student in ICS and a successful developer, you must be comfortable asking questions. In my few years of schooling, I have had many peers that refused to ask questions when they did not understand the material being taught. It may be a fear of looking dumb for not understanding, or not putting their pride behind them and being to stubborn to ask. Those students silently began falling behind and I could see them start panicking as the semester came to an end. The students that asked smart questions during lecture and utilized office hours were the ones who succeeded with flying colors. The skill of asking smart questions is a valuable skill to know.

A Bad Example

This question was asked on StackOverflow and is a prime example of what not to do. First of all, when fellow developers are browsing SO, they only see the title of the question and decide if they are able to answer the question. This title of the question:

function minMax(items) { items.reduce ([smallest, current] smallest < current ? smallest : current ) };

This is a terrible title; It give no context to the question. This question most likely gets little to no visits just on the fact that the question title has no title. If asking a question on an online forumn, you need to provide enough detail to even answer the question, but be brief about it.

A Better Example

This is a much better way to ask a question that can lead to some valuable discussion and getting an answer much easier. The amount of detail the person asking the question provides is adequate enough to be able to answer concisely and easily. The title is actually a question this time which is a plus. Even in the answer area, people are able to dive deep into the question and answer it in many ways.