Have you ever tried asking smarter questions? As a software engineer, asking smarter questions you will not only help yourself but the person who is answering your question. If you take the time to learn how to create better questions you will also get better at answering them yourself. But, how do we create smart questions?
A smart question is a question for a problem that you have been having trouble with, but you must also have done your fair share of research into your problem. Did you looking on the web for your problem? Someone might have had the same problem and had a question answered about it already. Have you exausted all of your problem solving skills? If you have tried both of these, then you are ready to ask a Smart Question. When asking your question be detailed but also concise, list the things that you have tried and what you have researched so question answerers understand you situation better. If you are posting your question to a forum, then it is good to create a header that explains your problem and also important details. To better understand the difference between a smart question and an un smart question:
In this question, the question asker wants to figure out how to fix a problem on their list viewer. This is a good smart question because the question asker provided documentation of the things they tried, as well as providing how they expect their application to run versus how they were implementing it. They also included the things they had researched and why they dont work for them. All of these factors led to them recieving an answer that complimented them on their own finding and how it could be incorporated into the solution.
In this question the question asker did not exaust all of their options before creating their question. In the question, the user wanted to know how download Node.js for windows(64 bit) using Fast Node Manager with npm. Aside from not exausting all their problem solving options before posting the question, the question is actually well detailed and useful for problem solving. They documented all the steps theys attempted and all the errors that they were experiencing, so why is it not a good question? Because the user did not do enough research into the problem, if they had done enough they would have found that the question has actualy been answered before.
By creating smarter questions you are helping yourself, by trying to examine the your problem to it’s fullest and doing proper research you can find your own answers or recieve better answers from others.