Eric Raymond introduces the idea of “Smart” questions in order to effectively ask questions in order to get the best, most efficient answers. As a programmer, I have to come to terms with knowing that I will be asking questions day and night when it comes to coding. So it is important for me, as well as other aspiring programmers, to learn how to ask smart questions or you will find yourself spending too much time asking questions rather than actually programming. We can look at examples online, grime stack overflow, of what it looks like to ask a smart question and a non-smart question.
First, we can look at what a non “smart” question looks like. This first question is about converting an integer into a string. It’s not a bad question especially if you are first learning how to code. The way they ask the question does not necessarily make it a non-smart question. In fact, it is well-formatted and pretty specific as to what they are asking for. What makes this a non-smart question is the fact that the answer to their question is in their initial question. The first set of code they show works using toString. But in the second code, they show, that does not work, toString is omitted from it which is the solution to their problem. Another part of asking a smart question is researching the problem yourself before asking others. They had the tools to figure it out because they showed the first code working.
Looking at another question from another developer, we can see that this is a smart question. It is formatted well with the code that they are asking for help with and there is nothing extra in their question to distract from the original question. The question was why they were getting a syntax error and they put the code into their question and the context of which line was causing the error. This is a “smart” question in comparison to the last one because it seems like they looked for different things that could have caused the problem and could not find anything, so that is when they finally asked for help.