Lets think smart
11 Sep 2025In How to Ask Questions the Smart Way, Eric Raymond outlines guidelines for interacting effectively with the open source and programming communities. His essay emphasizes that communication is one of the most essential skills for software engineers, and being able to ask questions the “smart way” is a critical component of that skill set. Asking well-formed, thoughtful questions not only increases the likelihood of receiving accurate and efficient answers but also demonstrates professionalism, respect for the community, and a commitment to learning. This essay examines examples from StackOverflow, showing how smartly asked questions lead to successful problem-solving and how questions asked in a not so smart way can affect the clarity and usefulness of the answers received.
A smart question
One example of a smart question involves a developer trying to update data in an extension class when the superclass data changes. The developer provides a clear explanation of the problem, a reproducible code example, and evidence of prior research.
The developer clearly explains the expected behavior, the actual behavior, and the steps already tried to resolve the issue. The StackOverflow community can quickly understand the problem and offer specific, effective solutions. This question follows Eric Raymond’s principles it gives context, provides a working example, asks a clear question, and shows evidence of prior research. These elements make it much more likely to receive efficient and helpful responses.
The link to the StackOverflow question: javascript - Update a class when the extended super class setter is used - Stack Overflow
A not so smart question
A not-so-smart question comes from a developer encountering an error while using the VlnPlot() function in Seurat v4. The question includes the error message, session info, and the goal (visualizing nFeature_RNA and nCount_RNA), but it lacks key details needed for an effective answer.
- No minimal reproducible example (the merged object is undefined).
- Incomplete context (unclear data processing steps, minor typos such as
nFeatuere_RNA). - Limited evidence of prior debugging beyond basic checks.
As a result, helpers on StackOverflow cannot fully reproduce the problem and must ask for additional information before providing useful guidance. This question does include some aspects of a smart question, such as providing error messages and a clear goal, but because it leaves out critical details, it is considered a “not so smart” question.
The link to the Stack Overflow question: Can’t find slots during VlnPlot in Seurat v4
Insight and comparison
These two questions show how important it is to ask clearly. The smart question gets answers faster because it has context, an example, and shows the asker tried to solve it first. The not-so-smart question causes confusion and extra back-and-forth. Asking clear questions saves time and makes it easier to get help.
Usage of Ai
Some questions I asked chatgpt
- Help me go more in depth of what im trying to say
- Revise and grammer check my work
- does my writing meet the assignment standards
Even though I used AI, I made sure to understand the topic we are learning about. AI serves as a guide to help organize my ideas and suggest a starting point for the assignment.