One of the most important things in pretty much all aspects of life is effective communication. In the programming world, I’d wager that most people would probably prefer straight-to-the point and clear communication. Being able to communicate in a standardized way so as to be understood is nothing new. It’s the same as all languages in the world. Taking Spanish words and saying it in English grammar will definitely raise eye-brows. Therefore, we must learn these standards for ourselves when integrating ourselves into this culture.
I’m the kind of person who likes hearing the good news first so let’s look at people who are fluent question-askers.
What does the yield keyword do in python
This is a smart question because the title is very clear in what it is asking, it doesn’t include any distracting or useless words like “HELP” or “URGENT”. Also, the asker of the question gives the snippet of the code alongside what they want it to do compared to what it is doing instead. This shows that the asker has a certain level of competency and isn’t starting from the baseline of not knowing any code at all. As a person who isn’t really familiar with python, I googled the question myself and it didn’t really give me an answer that made sense so I could see this question being valid in asking professionals. As a result of this question being asked, many different people who will have a similar question can look at this source to learn and develop their professional skills.
One of the worst things that someone asking people for their time can do is definitely being rude. Here is an example of a not-so-good question that someone posted recently:
From the very beginning, this asker is using non-standard English to ask the question. Using proper grammar and not using shorthand phrases like “pls” would probably be less likely to be overlooked. Another thing is that this asker seems to be under the notion that people on the website are SUPPOSED to help them by starting off their question with “pls fix this problem”. Also, the question itself has absolutely no context at all for what the person has done. Good practice would be to state what the code snippet is about at the start and what the person wants the snippet to do. Asking to just solve the problem is just wasting everyone’s time.
Although a lot of what the essay told me felt condescending and more like common sense, I did get some key takeaways from reading it. The main takeaway was just to write my thought process down alongside a snippet of code if applicable. This way, it can be easy to spot where the error or mistake happened. The second takeaway is that the author of the essay is actually just rude. After browsing StackOverflow and seeing some of the stupid questions and the responses, the overall climate of the comment section has changed from what the author was describing. It bought me joy to see rude comments that he had described in his essay being downvoted. Although the author does make a point about stupid questions, the whole self-identification as hackers and gatekeeping rubbed me the wrong way to be completely honest. Programming is hard for most people, and a community which is being condescending needs to change.