Upgrade to Pro — share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …

How to ask questions and find the right answers

How to ask questions and find the right answers

An introduction to finding help online when beginning programming. Given at RailsGirls Oulu.

Florian Plank

November 09, 2013
Tweet

More Decks by Florian Plank

Other Decks in Programming

Transcript

  1. “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses

    your understanding.” Khalil Gibran
  2. - What does it take to trigger the problem? -

    What is it that you want to achieve? - What happens instead? A
  3. - What is it that you want to achieve? -

    What is involved? - Where are you getting stuck? B
  4. A + B Too fuzzy? — Use a search engine.

    Don’t bother with site searches.
  5. ?

  6. What does it take to trigger the problem? What is

    it that you want to achieve? What happens instead? A WHEN THEN BUT
  7. What is it that you want to achieve? What is

    involved? Where are you getting stuck? B WHAT WITH HOW
  8. - Leave your emotions at the door. - Formulate your

    question with the answer in mind. - Be speci c in your terms. - Consider variations of your problem. - e order of the search terms matters. - Let the results guide your next question.
  9. - How old is an answer? Check the date. -

    How trustworthy is the source? - Explanation or just a code snippet? - Close, but no cigar? —Can you adapt an answer to your use case?
  10. - Leave your emotions at the door! - Provide all

    necessary context. - Show that and what you’ve tried. - Be speci c, be brief. - Make it relevant to others. - Keep an open mind. - Be nice.
  11. - Use as little tags a as possible. - Don’t

    use buzzwords. - is is not a honey pot!