topic: How to ask for help with your code

Tags soft-skills communication skill/developer_skills

A big part of learning to be a programmer of any kind is knowing how to get help. This means knowing how to ask questions. Your questions should be short and clear. Your question should include all the information that is needed to answer the question. Practise asking good questions. It’s like a superpower. If you are easy to help then people will help you.

An example of bad communication:

student: I have a problem.
staff member: What is your problem?
student: The code won't run.
staff member: Is there an error message?
student: Here is a shakey, blurrey video of my computer: [attachment: suuuuucks.zip].
staff member: Please send me the error text as actual text.
student: Here is: [one tiny useless part of the error message, selected so as to cause maximum pain and suffering].
staff member: Sometimes I wonder how we got this far as a species (quits job, takes up alcoholism).

An example of good communication:

student: Hi. I'm struggling to get my code to work. I'm working on this project [link to project]. When I do [X] then [Y] happens. I expected [Z]. It's giving me the following error message: [The full error message as text].
staff member: Here is an explanation [explanation], and here are some resources so you can learn more [resources]. And... I love you (+2 to faith in humanity).

Where to ask good questions

Characteristics of a good question:

As a general rule: If you want help then make it as easy as possible for people to help you. Empathise with the person who will help you. If they are left guessing or they have to ask a million follow-up questions then that means you asked a bad-quality question.

  • Ask on a bigger audience platform. (e.g Asking on the #General channel: which you will find on Rocketchat, helps you get to a much bigger audience and possibly quick responses from your fellow students, managers, and alumni)
  • Be clear and not ambiguous. Your “helpers” should be able to understand the problem while reading an error message.
  • Please don’t send screenshots unless you are specifically asking about something visual
  • Use backtick symbols to represent in code form.
  • Copy and Paste FULL error messages. Don’t just give half an error message
  • Be short and meaningful. Error messages should contain the necessary information. Most of the time your helper is not willing to read a long story.

Things to note

  • In general, if your question text contains code or error message those things need to be formatted properly. It needs to not look like a jumbled mess of words and symbols. Different platforms have different ways of pulling this off. RocketChat uses the backtick symbol. And Stackoverflow has its way. Be aware of the tools and conventions of the platform you are using, and then follow those conventions.
  • A similar good way to use Google is when searching for something specific, try using quotes to minimize the guesswork for Google search. When you put your search parameters in quotes, it tells the search engine to search for the whole phrase.

NB. IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO HELP OTHERS WHEN AND IF YOU HAVE THE ANSWERS (basically help and be helped).

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