Skip to content

Commit

Permalink
Update smartquestions.md
Browse files Browse the repository at this point in the history
  • Loading branch information
elijah-saloma authored Jan 26, 2024
1 parent 5b8507b commit 2d4c369
Showing 1 changed file with 1 addition and 1 deletion.
2 changes: 1 addition & 1 deletion essays/smartquestions.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ For me personally, I’ve seen this phrase lose its meaning over time and honest

Unfortunately, forming a smart question isn’t always a simple task, but there are definitely some boxes to check when doing so. The most important of which is, and I can’t emphasize this enough, CLARITY. The skill to get your point across is not only vital in asking smart questions, but also very applicable to both inside and outside the field of software engineering.

We see instances of both smart and not so smart questions asked on StackOverflow, a platform where the community asks and answers, typically programming, questions. It is important to keep in mind, however, that saying there are a lot of questions on StackOverflow would be an understatement. From a software engineering perspective, smart questions are incredibly important for the responders and askers. Responders are really busy people, so the more clear, explicit, and not open-ended you can formulate your question, the faster you can receive a constructive response. We see this in Eric Steven Raymond’s ["document"](http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html), where he states “The less of a time commitment you implicitly ask for, the more likely you are to get an answer from someone really good and really busy.” Make your subject headers concise and include a crystal-clear goal of what you want, such as tips or code. There must also be relevant background information that can provide a “road-map” of sorts for the responder as well.
We see instances of both smart and not so smart questions asked on StackOverflow, a platform where the community asks and answers, typically programming, questions. It is important to keep in mind, however, that saying there are a lot of questions on StackOverflow would be an understatement. From a software engineering perspective, smart questions are incredibly important for the responders and askers. Responders are really busy people, so the more clear, explicit, and not open-ended you can formulate your question, the faster you can receive a constructive response. We see this in Eric Steven Raymond’s [document](http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html), where he states “The less of a time commitment you implicitly ask for, the more likely you are to get an answer from someone really good and really busy.” Make your subject headers concise and include a crystal-clear goal of what you want, such as tips or code. There must also be relevant background information that can provide a “road-map” of sorts for the responder as well.

## Example of a Not so Smart Question

Expand Down

0 comments on commit 2d4c369

Please sign in to comment.