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HOW TO ASK QUESTIONS

How To Get Help Like A Boss

❗PLEASE READ FULLY❗

Table of Contents

INTRO

In the world of hackers, the kind of answers you get to your technical questions depends as much on the way you ask the questions as on the difficulty of developing the answer. This guide will teach you how to ask questions in a way more likely to get you a satisfactory answer.

It sometimes looks like we're reflexively rude to newbies and the ignorant. But this isn't really true. Please try to ask good questions 😸

General Structure Of The Question

It is important to give your audience the proper context. Luckily delivering context in software engineering is much simpler than in many other fields.

To get the best feedback on your issue, please, follow the structure of asking below. Of course wording can be different from suggested, depending on your particular situation

  1. I am doing ..... (e.g. task name and a link to the complete task description)
  2. I want to... (achieve something, e.g. have an element on a web page to float above other elements)
  3. I tried this... (code fragment, or codepen with minimal yet sufficient code fragment to reproduce the issue)
  4. How do I....? / What did I miss?

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Before You Ask

Before asking a question, do the following:

  1. If your question is about course - FAQ.
  2. If your question is about tasks - good place to ask is either of our chats.
  3. If question is about JS or HTML/CSS - search Web, MDN, etc.
  4. Also you can find an answer by inspection or experimentation.
  5. You're a programmer! So try to find an answer by reading the source code.

When you ask your question, display the fact that you have done these things first; this will help establish that you're not being a lazy sponge and wasting people's time. Better yet, display what you have learned from doing these things. We like answering questions for people who have demonstrated they can learn from the answers.

Take your time. Do not expect to be able to solve a complicated problem with a few seconds of Googling. Sit back, grab a cup of tea, relax and give the problem some thought before approaching experts. Trust us, they will be able to tell from your questions how much reading and thinking you did, and will be more willing to help if you come prepared. Don't instantly fire your whole arsenal of questions just because your first search turned up no answers (or too many).

Prepare your question. Think it through. Hasty-sounding questions get hasty answers, or none at all. The more you do to demonstrate that having put thought and effort into solving your problem before seeking help, the more likely you are to actually get help.

Remember, there is no such thing as a stupid question.😉

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When You Ask

  • Write in clear, grammatical, correctly-spelled language

  • Use Stack Overflow

    There are many similar questions, so try SEARCH first and then Ask.

  • Be precise and informative about your problem

    Describe the symptoms of your problem or bug carefully and clearly.

    Describe the environment in which it occurs (for example a browser).

    Describe the research you did to try and understand the problem before you asked the question.

    Describe the diagnostic steps you took to try and pin down the problem yourself before you asked the question.

  • Describe the problem's symptoms, not your guesses

  • Be explicit about your question

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Approaches examples

Approach 1 (bad)

A question like

I am trying to fetch data from server and publish it on a web page, but nothing happens. What am I doing wrong?

requires too many clarifications and therefore can be ignored by community.

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Approach 2 (good)

The alternative approach can be as follows.

I am trying to fetch data from a server like this.

const query = "https://api.somewhere.else/?id=5";
let info;
fetch(query).then(response => {
  if (response.ok) {
    return response.json();
  }
  throw Error('Querying ' + query + ' failed');
}, reject => console.error(reject.message))
.then(json => {
  info = json.results;
  return;
});
document.getElementById('output').innerHTML = info.name;

info receives data from server response, but output element doesn't get updated as expected. What is my mistake?

The fragment above provides required and sufficient context and experienced developer will figure out the problem instantly.

This approach requires a bit more efforts from the poster namely copy-pasting a code fragment. But the response rate will be much higher.

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Approach 3 (complex issue)

What if the fragment is way too big and also UI render required to see the issue clearly?

Publish a codepen or use any other similar service.

Then post the link and your comments and question to a community chat.

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Approach 4 (even more complex issue)

What if the project is way too big for codepen and you cannot extract a part of it to build proper visualization?

Just open a draft pull request for the code review! That's what draft pull requests can be efficiently used for.

You can open a PR in your own repository. Put your code fragment in a dedicated branch, push, publish the project (on e.g. GitHub Pages) and invite others to review your code.

You may need to involve them as collaborators via project settings. So, invite only those you trust, and make sure they want to be invited.

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Front-End Specific Tools To Use

IF YOU USE ONE OF THESE TOOLS TO DISPLAY YOUR CODE YOU WILL GET MORE QUICK ANSWER.

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Where To Ask

  1. FE Students | Kottans - chat for students, where you can discuss anything related to the current course
  2. FE Questionarium | Kottans - if you need a help of one of the mentors, or maybe from all of them simultaneously, you can ask it there

❗Please do NOT write code in the chat if this is more than 5 lines❗

Use online services to post code instead.

❗Please do NOT post code as screenshots as this may require your readers to re-type the code to see how it would work❗

Many chat apps (e.g. Telegram) support markdown. Put your code between ``` and ``` (two rows containing triple backticks) to have your code properly formatted. Shift or Alt plus Enter keys allow you to write multi-line chat message.

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Further Readings On The Topic

If you want to know more details on the topic or see how other sources discover it and what they highlight on, consider reading any of the below materials:

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