How to Ask Questions the Smart Way (2001-2014)

Cunningham's Law - "The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it's to post the wrong answer."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham#Cunningham's_L...

This seems dated. Especially the RTFM and STFW parts. Learning should be a fun experience. There are people who love explaining things without having to use RTFM and STFW.

I find that when asking questions to strangers, its best to think of it as building something for someone else to build something on top of—-that question has to have a certain amount of polish.

If you are struggling with the thing in general, its better to find a way to get someone to agree to give you their focused attention. That probably means hiring someone on https://codementor.io

Within a company however, you can often just say “I’m working on X and would like a walkthrough about Y. Can I put some time on you calendar?” However, you still delegating a task to your answerer and so you still want to put thought into how you can set your answerer up for success. There is a post by Julia Evans on asking questions of coworkers which is really helpful for thinking about how to do this: https://jvns.ca/blog/good-questions/

Another good resource

https://ideas.redpepper.land/asking-great-questions-15eb31e6...

Which includes a link to Humble Inquiry, the best book on the topic.

Required reading for consultants.