Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
How to ask questions and find the right answers
Search
Florian Plank
November 09, 2013
Programming
2
340
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
Share
More Decks by Florian Plank
See All by Florian Plank
Ready, set, immersion!
polarblau
0
170
Prototyping all the things
polarblau
2
170
CoffeeScript vs. ECMAScript 6
polarblau
5
3.5k
Design for a complex Reality — Siili Breakfast Edition
polarblau
0
140
Enabling Design for a Complex Reality
polarblau
2
130
A primer on Content Security Policy
polarblau
1
410
Rails and the future of the open web
polarblau
3
130
Brief Ruby/Ruby on Rails intro
polarblau
3
180
Ruby Idioms
polarblau
3
570
Other Decks in Programming
See All in Programming
CLI ツールを Go ライブラリ として再実装する理由 / Why reimplement a CLI tool as a Go library
ktr_0731
3
960
ソフトウェア設計とAI技術の活用
masuda220
PRO
26
7.3k
マイコンでもRustのtestがしたい その2/KernelVM Tokyo 18
tnishinaga
0
130
WebAssemblyインタプリタを書く ~Component Modelを添えて~
ruccho
1
220
Gemini CLIの"強み"を知る! Gemini CLIとClaude Codeを比較してみた!
kotahisafuru
3
920
プロダクトという一杯を作る - プロダクトチームが味の責任を持つまでの煮込み奮闘記
hiliteeternal
0
390
AI Ramen Fight
yusukebe
0
130
リッチエディターを安全に開発・運用するために
unachang113
1
350
バイブスあるコーディングで ~PHP~ 便利ツールをつくるプラクティス
uzulla
1
320
ZeroETLで始めるDynamoDBとS3の連携
afooooil
0
150
AIコーディングエージェント全社導入とセキュリティ対策
hikaruegashira
16
9.4k
Quality Gates in the Age of Agentic Coding
helmedeiros
PRO
1
120
Featured
See All Featured
CoffeeScript is Beautiful & I Never Want to Write Plain JavaScript Again
sstephenson
161
15k
Responsive Adventures: Dirty Tricks From The Dark Corners of Front-End
smashingmag
251
21k
Templates, Plugins, & Blocks: Oh My! Creating the theme that thinks of everything
marktimemedia
31
2.5k
CSS Pre-Processors: Stylus, Less & Sass
bermonpainter
357
30k
Done Done
chrislema
185
16k
Building a Scalable Design System with Sketch
lauravandoore
462
33k
Measuring & Analyzing Core Web Vitals
bluesmoon
7
540
The Art of Programming - Codeland 2020
erikaheidi
54
13k
Dealing with People You Can't Stand - Big Design 2015
cassininazir
367
26k
How to Ace a Technical Interview
jacobian
278
23k
Creating an realtime collaboration tool: Agile Flush - .NET Oxford
marcduiker
30
2.2k
Designing for Performance
lara
610
69k
Transcript
H W TO ASK QUESTIONS AND FIND THE RIGHT ANSWERS
You will f*ck up.
You will f*ck up. Every day.
And that’s okay.
And that’s okay. It’s the best part, really.
“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses
your understanding.” Khalil Gibran
(A story of a button.)
Getting ahead in 5 easy steps
Admit that you have a problem. 1
Walk away. 2
Narrow it down. 3
A Is something broken? B Are you stuck?
- What does it take to trigger the problem? -
What is it that you want to achieve? - What happens instead? A
- What is it that you want to achieve? -
What is involved? - Where are you getting stuck? B
Research. 4
A “Do you have a name”? Check the documentation.
None
None
A + B Too fuzzy? — Use a search engine.
Don’t bother with site searches.
None
?
What does it take to trigger the problem? What is
it that you want to achieve? What happens instead? A WHEN THEN BUT
What is it that you want to achieve? What is
involved? Where are you getting stuck? B WHAT WITH HOW
- 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.
A + B Evaluate the results.
- 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?
Ask for help. 5
None
(What is Stackover ow and how does it work?)
So, you think you’re ready to ask a question?
Have you exhausted all other means?
Did you search for similar questions?
Really?
Really? Alright then —
None
None
- Leave your emotions at the door. - Be speci
c, be brief.
None
None
None
- 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.
None
- Use as little tags a as possible. - Don’t
use buzzwords. - is is not a honey pot!
None
None
Now wait. Go, do something else. Be patient.
…
Found what you needed?
Found what you needed? Take some time to understand.
Comment. Ask follow–up questions. Be grateful.
…
Repeat. ∞
Experts Beginners
Experts Beginners Highly specialized questions Universal questions
Someone somewhere had the same problem than you before.
Give up.
Give up for the moment
Give up for the moment, but never for good.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Writing Ruby is a magical experience, but Ruby is not
magic.
Here’s something to get you started:
None
None
@polarblau