There is no such thing as a stupid question?
09 Sep 2021
As a 4th year computer science student, I have had lots of questions regarding seemingly non-apprehensible error messages in different programming languages. I have received valuable answers to these questions by professors and friends, however, a simple Google-search is what has helped me the most in understanding my faulty code. When I have googled my questions, I have almost always been redirected to Stack Overflow where someone already has experienced the same type of difficulties as I have. They have asked smart questions that is informative and concise enough for me to easily take advantage of the forum-post. However, as I was made aware of in the essay “How to Ask Questions the Smart Way” by Eric Steven Raymond, there exists tons of stupid questions out on Stack Overflow that will never be found through a Google-search (except if you are a “loser” yourself) and will probably never be answered. These questions tend to clearly show a lack of effort in figuring out the problem themselves, as well as they do not seem to make any effort in facilitating the responders on Stack Overflow with an informative, grammatically correct and polite question. Well, maybe the phrase “There is no such thing as a stupid question” should be reconsidered changed to: “Yes, there is such a thing as a stupid question”?
A stupid question
Since I was made aware of these “losers” ruining the professional reputation of Stack Overflow, I had to search the website to see it with my own eyes. And there it was, my first experience with a stupid Stack Overflow question. First, let’s start with the header: “Java Code Compile Issue”. This header is not meaningful nor specific about the issue the person is facing. There are millions of possibilities of “compile issues” in Java and this headline just makes me think the person has not made any effort in understanding the error-message that pops up when compiling the code. The header is also misleading as one person responds “It is compiling. It’s failing at runtime” to the post.
When reading the post, the person has just posted the code and the error message popping up forcing the others to get into and understand the code before being able to answer the question. Again, this scream “no effort has been made here”, where it would have helped with a sentence or two trying to describe where and what the error-message is about. One of the first comments to the post is: “It’d be nice to indicate in the source, which is the line mentioned in the exception.” This comment clearly thinks this is a stupid post where the person has not even bothered to add the line-numbers to the code in order for the Stack Overflow community to understand the error-message better (which includes line-numbers).
The problem the code is trying to solve is also presented by a link to a website called Hackerrank. It is not fair to expect “hackers” to click on other insecure websites in order to be able to help you. The problem-task should just have been summarized in the post which do not require much effort.
At first sight the post appears to be polite where the person has been generous with using the word “Please”. However, when reading the post the “please” seems rather strict where the numbering of the extremely short and sloppy problem description (referring to point 3: “Please tell me what is going on with this”), makes the whole post appear impolite and demanding. No wonder this post has 33 down-votes!
A smart question
However, as mentioned, there exists better and smarter questions on Stack Overflow for me and everyone else to take advantage of. An example of this is this smart Stack Overflow question. First, the header is informative and of good convention according to the essay by Eric Raymond. “C++ VS Fatal error C1083 Permission denied” is by the convention “object-deviation” where it first states the language and code editor which is followed by the problem the person is facing with C++ code. As the problem description starts with “I have searched for hours online” and includes sayings like “what I read on another post”, it is obvious to the readers that the person has made an effort and checked of all of the bullet points under “Before You Ask in Stack Overflow”. The person behind this post is also concise and informative about the problem, clearly describing the environment (Microsoft VS Command Prompt, Windows 8 64 bit), the research the person has done, and any recent changes made on the computer.
The person has also followed up with a respond to the post saying that the problem is fixed and how it can be fixed by others possibly coming across the same problem. This will help others searching the archive to know which solution that helped you and is also making everyone who assisted feel a satisfying sense of closure about the problem.
There is such a thing as a stupid question
After reading through a lot of Stack Overflow posts this morning it has made me more aware about the importance of asking good and smart questions. As a software engineer there are an endless amount of problems you will encounter along your way, and a good question will not only profit the Stack Overflow community, but also give you a deeper and more thorough understanding of the problem you are facing. From this day forward I will for sure be more consistent of claiming the fact that: “That was actually a very stupid question!”.