How to ask better questions

Asking questions matter a lot. However asking good questions it’s a skill which leads to discovery and imporvement and utimately to learning. However there good and bad questions. Not all questions are good. You need to be more concious about your comunications.

Also your question say a lot about yourself. It show how much you know and how much you care or how much you want to know. Not asking questions is worst than asking bad questions.

IF you have homework todo or a task in your name, it’s expected that your are responsable for doing that. Do not transfer that resposability to others.

Bad Questions

IF you just “ask a question” could be read as:

• Lack of respect for the time and effort of others
• Lack of effort on your part to solve the problem yourself
• Lack of clarity about what you want to know

When asking questions - DO NOT:

• Give a link to a paper and say read for me and explain
• Give a link to a video and say watch and explain
• Give a link to a book and say read and explain
• Give a ChatGPT or Similar AI output and ask someone to read and tell what they tink (this is a huge red flag and disrespectful)
• Transfer your responsability to others

Bad questions are “signals” that you know very little about the topic.

Before asking a question

• Use google and search for what companies are doing
• Go see multiple videos in youtube
• Read papers
• Read parts of books
• Try to do something by yourself

Asking questions

• Be specific and clear about what you want to know
• Provide context and background information
• Show your own efforts and what you have tried

Anatomy of a good question

A good question looks like code review IMHO. If you stop to think about it would be crazy if someone ask you to review code and them you click on the PR and there is nothing there, no code, nothing. So there is nothing for you to review.

I need to say the obious when, we review code, someone must do the code in the first place and put in front of you. When we do Architecture/Design is the same deal. In order to review some architecture or design you need a wikipage with some text and diagrams so you can review it.

Pretty sure you understand that and it’s obvious. However when we are considering questions that does not happen. People ask questions without understandign anything about the subject, that is the same as asking for a code review without writting any code.

Go do some research, read some papers, watch some videos, read some books, try to do something by yourself. Them show all you did and propose something, for instance if:

• It’s a presentation - show some slides and ask for review
• It’s a design - write down a wikipage with some diagrams and ask for review
• It’s a paper - write down a draft and ask for review
• It’s a project - write down a proposal and ask for review
• It’s a task - write down what you did and what you want to do and ask for review
• It’s a question - write down what you know and what you want to know and ask for review

Better questions look like code review.

Getting Better

1. Always spend time doing research before asking questions.
2. Write down what you know and what you want to know.
3. Propose something based on your research.
4. The questions could also be reviewed and classified if they are good or bad. For sake of improvement.
5. Think about corner cases / edge cases as as way to generate better questions.
6. Repeat and Pratice, to get better.