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Comment by fishtoaster | Hacker News Reader

Oh, I might have to borrow that! I've sometimes used "for my own understanding, is there a reason we're not doing X?"

This one grates on me as insincere-sounding, to be honest. It can sound a bit like a sarcastic way to state the obvious. “Oh, you’re cold? For my understanding — and I may be way off base here — but is there a reason you haven’t closed the fucking window?” (Obvious extreme example of intentional sarcasm)

I wish more people would ask simple questions with the expectation of getting a complicated answer.

Usually it’s more along the lines of “for my own understanding, why can’t we just ship things as they’re ready instead of waiting for everything in the order to go in one box?”

Similar: I like “maybe a dumb question, but tell me about X”. I am never shy about being possibly redundant or asking “dumb” questions.

I try not to frame things as “dumb questions” because I find that junior devs can feel a lot of their questions are “dumb” but really they’re often very good questions and (even if you lead by example) they can be hesitant to ask them. I think it’s generally a good assumption that if someone has a question in mind then it’s worth exploring, so there are no dumb questions.

Fair point. I think as a senior dev (and someone in their mid-40s with a longish career) I want to make a point that I still ask the type of question. But a good thing to be sensitive to.

Yeah absolutely and some of the most senior engineers I have worked with often made a point of asking seemingly obvious questions, to great effect. I think it’s a wonderful thing to demonstrate and I do the same.

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