Asking a Dumb Question vs Asking a Question Dumbly

09 Sep 2022

The quote “there is no such thing as a dumb question” is as old as time. While I, for the most part, believe that there is no such thing as a dumb question, I do believe that there is such a thing as asking a question dumbly. While it is generally a good idea to obtain as much information from a question as possible, the way the question is asked may dictate the information you receive more than the question itself. In the essay “How To Ask Questions the Smart Way” by Eric Steven Raymond, it goes over where you should ask the question first, and then how you should be asking it in order to receive the best responses. It also goes over how you should not ask questions, and how you should react to certain answers that you have received. Following the guidelines written by Raymond is a good way to ensure that the question you are asking is as smart as possible and will return the most useful answers.

Asking the Question Smartly

When I first started learning programming in C, the most difficult thing that I had learning were pointers. I could not for the life of me figure out how a pointer worked or what its purpose was besides confusing me. So naturally, I decided to ask google for some help, which led me to a website called Stack Overflow.

Let’s take a look at this question asked by Yuval Adam, who wants to know how function pointers work in C. While in this question he is also going to be the one to answer them, he is specific about what he wants other people to learn from his question, which is the basics of function pointers in C. He is clear and concise in what he is asking, and responds with an equally clear and concise answer. In Adam’s answer, a pointer is clearly defined, and is then used in multiple examples, such as using them to point to a function or in return values. This question was met with welcome by other programmers and received positive feedback from other users as well. While Adam’s question may not have followed every guideline in Raymond’s essay, it follows some of the essentials when asking a question:

Make it easy to reply
Write in clear, grammatical, correctly-spelled language
Be precise and informative about your problem
Describe the goal

Now let’s take a look at a question that was asked in a not so smart way, to put it mildly. To begin, the question, titled “Hello, I think I have a problemwith the pointers, I need help !, can you fix my code” seems to be written without grammar in mind. There is also no goal clearly stated in the question, such as learning about pointers for example. According to Raymond, when asking about code, don’t ask others to debug your code without giving information as to its problem. This was clearly not in mind when the question was posted and is clearly not a question asked smartly. This is easily reflected when reading the comments, suggesting that the user format their question properly and read the “How to Ask” help page on stack overflow. Another comment asked the user what their code was supposed to do. It is hard to answer a question when you don’t really know what the problem is in the first place. As predicted, this question was largely ignored with three downvotes and two possible answer and servers as a template on how to not ask a question.

Be Smart

While there may be no such things as dumb questions, there are dumb ways to ask questions. Asking a question smartly is often just as important as the question itself. The first question we took a look at clearly met the standards of a smart question, and was thus met with positive and smart responses. On the other hand, the second question lacked clarity, and an understanding of the problem, and thus did not provoke much thought into its corresponding feedback. As technology continues to advance and new information is constantly being discovered, those who ask the questions smartly will clearly pull ahead compared to those who do not in a world where the information is at our fingertips, we merely just have to ask.