The most important skill for software engineering to develop is communication. One of the significant communication skill of all for software engineers is to ask questions in a smart way. The essay “How to ask questions the smart way”, was wriiten by Eric Raymond. It provides the guidelines for effective interaction with community in how to ask or answer in a smart way.
There is an example of question submitted by a developer in StackOverflow that lack of smartness in asking a question. The question is “Maddhatter Calendar view not being displayed”. The developer didn’t state clearly and exactly the problem’s symptoms. Instead, the developer used his/her interpretations and theories to guess what the problem is. There is lack of precise and informative description about the problem. Besides, there is no answer have been addressed to this question.
Another example of question submitted by a developer in StackOverflow fulfill the precepts for smart questions. The question is “Importing CSV with line breaks in Excel 2007”. The developer describe the symptoms of the problem carefully and clearly in a chronological order. More than that, he/she describes the process of how he/she tries to approach and solve the problem. The question is ask in an appropriate and standard format. Besides that, there are multiple answers have been addressed to this question, which provide helpful information and explanation to the developer.
From this experience, I form a deeper understanding of what questions consider to be smart or not smart. I acknowledge that the way and effectiveness you ask a question would affect the quality of the answers. Asking the smart question is at the heart of effective communications and information exchange. By using the smart questions, I can improve a whole range of communications skills. For example, I can gather better information and learn more. More than that, it can help to build stronger relationships, manage people more effectively, and help others to learn too.
More info about the example 1: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51169779/maddhatter-calendar-view-not-being-displayed
More info about the example 2: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2668678/importing-csv-with-line-breaks-in-excel-2007