How to ask programming questions "correctly"

Question

I would like to know what is your style when you want to get quality answers from experts. Normally, my stumbling blocks are the following:

• My co-workers are either being sarcastic in giving their answers and their body language and vibe shows that the answer is pretty obvious or trivial to them. (This happens when I ask for their opinions).

When in forums I usually get:

1. RTFM
2. The topmost link found in Google results using the keywords found in my question.
3. A Wikipedia entry of a topic found in my question.

What I normally want and consider a "quality" answer are links in which from their "experience" used it and help them solved the problem.

Answer 1

Ask your question, then ask even more questions explaining the details so you can understand it. Usually I have found that the first question you ask will result in a sarcastic, silly, or short answer, but as you ask more questions about it, they tend to get serious and start to give you real answers. In my experience, if you don't go further than the first question, it musn't be very important. (Unless it is a question that can be answered easily).

Answer 2

it's very simple:

1. ask the basic question, with minimal back-story and details
2. tell them what you already know
3. ask politely if they can point you in a fruitful direction

The second item demonstrates that you have RTFM, googled, and read the relevant wiki entries already, which shows that you are not just a freeloader saying plz send teh codez ;-)

Answer 3

It's impossible to over-recommend Eric S. Raymond's timeless classic, How To Ask Questions The Smart Way. It's the ultimate M, should you ever need to RTFM about asking questions. :)

Answer 4

I'm guessing that the inner question is about what you're doing to trigger a sarcastic reaction, because sarcastic reactions to questions kind of suck. The answer there is often that (sic warning) the sarcasm says a lot more about the sarcasmer than it does about the sarcasmee. Some people will sneer at those they see as being below their level.

That said, what I've seen work best in technical forums depends on whether you're asking for help on a problem, or help on understanding concepts.

For problems:

1. Strip off the emotional content. For the most part, telling everyone how frustrated you are turns some percentage of us off
2. Say what you're trying to achieve (and be prepared for some people to challenge you on the why, often for no good reason, but sometimes for very good reasons)
3. Show your work. List out, briefly, the steps you took. If you already RTFM'd, say so.
4. Provide reasonable detail on what happened, noting the parts that you expected, and the parts that you didn't
5. Closing with "any pointers will be appreciated" or "Thanks in advance for the help" might help
6. Following up once you've solved the problem is quite often appreciated

For concepts, it's pretty much the same, minus step 4. The key is to show that you're putting in some effort.

Answer 5

Quoting your specific annoying answers:

1. RTFM
2. The topmost link found in Google results using the keywords found in my question.
3. A Wikipedia entry of a topic found in my question.

You should ask your questions in such a way that these are seen as useless answers. I'm assuming here you've already read the manual, googled and read the wikipedia entry (otherwise you probably shouldn't be asking the question yet). Most people don't mind helping as long as you make it clear you've invested some effort already (as proof, see how quickly showmethecodez question get shut down here on SO). And always be polite and thankful (in asking the question, not just in receiving the answer).

Something along the lines of:

I'm trying to figure out the best way of randomizing the lines of a file using the bash shell. The man pages for bash haven't helped me with this specific task and all the results returned by Google are for C# code to do it and I don't know that language well enough (and don't want to have to learn a new language just to be able to do this task).

The wikipedia entry for bash shows a $RANDOM variable but I haven't been able to figure out how to incorporate that into a script to do what I need.

Any help you guys can give me would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Answer 6

My rule of thumb is to ask about the problem I'm trying to solve, instead of the specific approach I'm using. Mention the approach as an aside, to show that you've already put some thought into it.

More experienced people will often be able to offer a better approach that you would have never found out about if you'd ask them a more specific question. In general it gives them more context to answer your question.

Answer 7

When asking questions in non-face-to-face forums, one mistake I see made often is not to include enough information for someone to figure out what the particular problem might even be. This can be difficult, since you're immersed in the question and all of the code surrounding it, but when you compose a question, try to step back and take the point of view of someone coming to it fresh. Given your post, if were were stepping up to it fresh and without the background you have, what would be the questions you'd ask? Answer them in the post.

Going further with this, see if you can extract a small-standalone piece of code that demonstrates the problem. Can you provide something that someone else can drop in to a file and run to show the problem? This isn't always possible, but when it is, that makes the job of someone trying to answer your question a lot easier.