When seeking help, it is important to ask questions in a smart way that would get you helped efficiently. How To Ask Questions The Smart Way, written by Eric Raymond has mentioned things we need to be aware of from an insider perspective. He mentioned you would need to show you have put in effort before asking for help. If you didn’t even put in the effort to solve the problem and just expect someone to tell you the answer then, why would they waste their time to solve a problem you don’t even want to solve?
You would also need to make it easy for them to identify the problem. It is helpful to state the problem’s symptoms instead of what you think is causing the problem. So they would know what error they are looking for.
There is a post on StackOverflow with the header, Why am I getting “file not found” when trying to read another file Java. This header did specify the problem and the programming language. The post also states the problem’s symptoms:
“Here is my result: IO Error occurred:java.nio.file.NoSuchFileException: mary.txt IO Error occurred:java.io.IOException: Is a directory”
It looks good so far but if you look at other part of the post you can’t see the effort that the developer have put in to solve the problem. All it said was, “Ive tried many many different things but just need a hand.” It didn’t state what specifically she/he has done. So this would be considered as not so smart question.
Link to the StackOverflow post: Link to post
Another post on StackOverFlow with head, Error after changing app’s compileSdkVersion and targetSdkVersion. The header has specified the problem. Then in the post developer specified that it worked till he changed compileSdkVersion 34 and targetSdkVersion 34. Also include the symptom(error message: Execution failed for task ‘:app:processDebugResources’ ….) instead of talking about its guesses on what caused the problem.
The developer has put in lots of work to solve the problem. He/she has tried 7 ways to solve the problem like invalid Caches/Restart, changing the version of buildTools, and more. From this, I can tell the effort that the developer has put in before asking for help. So I would consider this as a good example of a smart question.
Link to the StackOverflow post: Link to post
Things that Eric Raymond has mentioned in How To Ask Questions The Smart Way, will help you get the help you need efficiently. Your post needs to show you have put in effort to find the solution and care about the problem you post. Try to think this yourself, Would you help a person that don’t even care about himself just wait for other people to help him? Header is also important, it lets the others know the specific problem you’re having and if It’s something in their field then they would most likely help you. So post post-smart question is important.