Smart questions can be seen as an important part of development in their learning. The smart question itself can be very valuable for both the person asking the question and the person answering it. The person answering the question can approach these types of smart questions as a way to not only strengthen their knowledge on the subject but also help improve their problem-solving skills as well. The person that asks the smart question will in return gain more information on how to solve the problem and be able to learn from their peer’s answers on how they tackled the problem. There are some nice smart questions posted on forums like stack overflow but alas there are also some questions that are not so smart.
When asking a smart question, there are ways to ask a question. This post is not a good example of asking a smart question. The post is first titled “I made an mistake… Plz help me. (RoR, Firebase Hosting)” by Kerbong. Already there are two things wrong with the header. The person has decided to have incorrect grammar by putting in “plz” instead of “please”. To follow up on that, the title is just expressing their anguish when the title could be much better used as a super-concise problem description as said in the article “How to ask questions the smart way” by Eric Raymond. Kerbong has also stated that he/she is a “beginner developer” which not only further strengthens the incorrect grammar but also inflicts groveling which can be seen as distracting and unhelpful.
Having all of these elements greatly decreases his/her chances of getting their questions answered. The title by itself will often shy away other users from helping out due to those conditions. They may even think it is not worth their time to answer the question due to how the post is given and the type of character that the user gives off.
This particular post approaches the question in a more formal way. The title which is “Android Calling JavaScript functions in WebView”, posted by “user163757”, gives a brief description of what the user’s problem is revolving around. The description is short and to the point, with the problem the person has while displaying the attempts that have been made combined with the code he has inputted in his efforts. He has also stated that he has done his research on how to approach the question and all sources point to the attempts that he has just made.
All of these elements set up a good smart question in which return gives out a smart answer for the user. It trains the askee to use his/her problem-solving methods to figure out what the problem is and in return gives their perspective on how they would solve the problem. The person asking the question then receives the answer and can now put that answer to good use on either solving the problem or further thinking of more ideas on how to solve it if it did not.
This experience has helped me gain a perspective on what it is like to ask smart questions. When asking smart questions the wrong way, people will either not answer them altogether or answer in a harsher tone. Asking a smart question can be seen as a beneficial opportunity for people who read it and can really reflect on both sides of where they stand in intelligence. This type of method can pave a pathway for future soon-to-be software engineers who undergo the same question that the person asking once had.
The links below show the smart way and the dummy way to ask smart questions.