To be honest I never liked the phrase “There is no such thing as a stupid question.” Contrary to popular beliefs, Eric Raymond describes smart and stupid questions in his article, “How to ask questions the smart way” which I believe proves the “no stupid question” idea wrong. I know for a fact that in my past I’ve asked more than a handful of dumb questions and have heard my fair share as well, but I haven’t actually gone into depth into quantifying the reasons why. Eric Raymond’s article was not only informative but also delightful as he wrote without the care of stepping on people’s toes, something quite refreshing and even inspiring.
Since reading Eric Raymond’s article I set out to find a smart and stupid question that both fit his standards. The first question I found was by someone named RaYell, who wanted to clarify whether to use return false or event.preventDefault(). He states his current understanding of the topic being they both stop the functions event propagation, and an opinion on using return false, being as it was a shorter process with less room for error. His question asked in which situation would be best to use one or the other, and what the significant difference is. The answers given was quick and to the point, event.preventDefault() stops the default from returning, event.stopPropagation() from “bubbling up”, and return false does both of these features. But all in all the two complete their job in question effectively the same. Eric Raymond would not consider this the best question, but it does follow some of his guidelines, his grammar and spelling is correct, he kept his question to less than 4 paragraphs, and he provided his sample code with just enough of a background to find the answer he needed. The answer was equally precise and illuminating, with the response being an answer in under a paragraph.
RaYell’s Event Propagation Question
The second reading I found in search of questions fitting Eric Raymond’s guidelines was by a user named Shane. Shane declares he is studying for a final and requests help solving a test question. While he is polite and says he appreciates any help, thanking future respondents ahead of time, he does break a lot of Raymond’s guidelines. First he asked for help on a homework problem, second he doesn’t show any signs or attempts of solving the question before posting it, and third he didn’t follow up to the one response someone was willing to submit to his post. The answer to Shanes post was just as vague as his question, saying they think it’s B, being unsure with information he doesn’t back up or claim he knows for a fact.
If I can take away anything from Eric Raymond’s article, it would be the knowledge needed to actually ask a question. Even with my preconceived idea of dumb questions, Eric made it clear that asking a question shouldn’t just be a one way street, and this fact is both embarrassing and revealing to the mindset that I hold. As I continue my study into software engineering I can understand the need to ask an enormous amount of questions, the days I have with professionals at my college are numbered, and while I can try to keep in contact the real source of peer interaction will come in the form of open source forums. What better way than to know how to ask not only the right question, but the smart one as well. Even if I only ask one question in my future, if nothing else I just don’t want to ask a stupid one!