The Smart Against The Dumb Questions
06 Sep 2018
Smart questions are the structured and organized questions with full descriptions of the questions being asked. They will be easily understood by the readers and might have many different solutions for that same question. The dumb questions are not completely describing the problems and kind of vagueness involved. Most of the educated people tend to ask smart questions rather than dumb ones as they have a higher IQ and EQ compared to uneducated people. Today, people are exploring the open sources to get their solutions on all types of questions such as GitHub and StackOverflow. Even the questions are kind of smart or dumb, the open sources are the best places to get the answers.
The way of asking smart questions
In this link: How To Ask Questions The Smart Way created by Eric Steven Raymond, described that smart questions will get satisfactory answers. This indicates that he totally agree that people should ask smart questions in order to be quickly responded by the readers. In smart questions, the problems must be described as precise and informative as possible for the receivers to respond. He emphasized that some questions should be avoided as they are dumb questions but some rules had to be followed for eliminating the obstacles in asking the smart questions.
A solution for smart question
As mentioned above, a smart question usually has many solutions for the answer, and many people will try to assist in solving that type of question. The example of the smart question as quoted by Jschrab is “What is the most efficient way to deep clone an object in JavaScript?” Here is the link for his smart question: link1
Most of the solution is explaining on how to solve the problems by using some steps to be taken. In this case, this smart question will not be misinterpreted or misunderstood as they have described precisely what is involving in the problem. In this question, most readers reply by using technical support in solving the problem. Then, Jschrab will be able to choose the best solutions for his smart question.
A solution for dumb question
When a person asked a dumb question, he or she might get the answer but it will be a vague solution. Usually, the people asked this dumb question due to their ignorance of the subject involved but they feel that they do not want to be left out from the forum or community. Then, they create this type of dumb questions. The example of dumb question quoted by User456814 is “How do JavaScript closure work?” Here is the link to that dumb question: link2. It shows that readers’ responses are funny and awkward as it is vague and the information on the problem is not complete. Some of the readers have requested for the removal of this dumb question.
Advice for both questions
It is important for the software engineers to acquire the smart questions as they will be able to analyze in depth for the solutions with a better result. In this way, they will do an analytical analysis based on the solutions shared among the engineers and develop the best solution for solving the problem. However, in the dumb questions, most of the software engineers are unable to solve the problems due to the incomplete quotation of the problems and the vagueness of the questions. I think it is better to ask a smart than a dumb question as it is an effective way in solving the problems with the minimum time involved.