Stupid is as Stupid Asks

Think before you Ask

It is something that you do every day. In a high stress environment, the response needed is often immediate. In an email it can be a bit longer to allow your thoughts to fully develop from point to point and get the meat of what it is you are really asking. The point remains you ask questions every single day. Personally, I think about what I need in a satisfactory response and whom I should ask to get the answer the fastest, but I never thought about how I should be asking my question. It is beneficial for both myself and the poor person who I had the unfortunate nature of badgering with my question to think about what I want to ask. This saves us both time and frustration going back and forth trying to get to the bottom of it. By showing my thought process with what I have done or haven’t done it shows that I have put the time in to try, really try to get to my head wrapped around this issue. Below is a question that was asked in a thoughtful way showing the thought process and what they really dying to know. The other not so much.

The Good

Stackoverflow: Good

To get their question answered and not marked as duplicate like the above the poster they showed they tried to answer the question themselves first. They used two different popular programming languages. They shortened their code to only what is relevant. They outlined the specifics of what they thought was wrong and what they tried to do to fix it. The title was specific and all neatly formatted and largely free of grammatical errors, additionally a summary with what their specific questions are. Below is small portion of their post:

Why is processing a sorted array faster than processing an unsorted array?

std::sort(data, data + arraySize);

    // Test
    clock_t start = clock();
    long long sum = 0;

    for (unsigned i = 0; i < 100000; ++i)
    {
        // Primary loop
        for (unsigned c = 0; c < arraySize; ++c)
        {
            if (data[c] >= 128)
                sum += data[c];
        }
    }

My first thought was that sorting brings the data into the cache, but then I thought how silly that was because the array was just generated.

• What is going on?
• Why is processing a sorted array faster than processing an unsorted array? The code is summing up some independent terms, so the order should not matter.

By going through all the trouble to sit down and think about their question and explain what they were curious about it generated over a million views and many responses. The formatting of their question also encouraged the highest voted respondent to follow the same for their reply. They top voted response went so far as to include numerous explanations, pictures, a link to a relevant Wikipedia page, and a fix for their code. All used to explain what went wrong, and more importantly why.

The Bad

Stackoverflow: Not so Good

This post is from the opposite perspective. The question is stated in the title, and while they have asked what they wanted to know they did not show the due diligence of someone asking a question on an open forum. There is no mention of what they tired, what there thought process was or even an explanation. It is most evident that they asked a poor question by the responses listed. The first was a litany of questions trying to get more detail, and the second was a link to relevant parts of the API methods. The post in its entirety is shown below:

Unity gameobject colour change

So I’ve been with this for a while now, and am completly stuck. How exactly can I change of the colour of a game object when it is hit by another. What I want to do is when a target is hit, for it to change colour. Any ideas?

Thanks!

Being polite is great but more detail of their thought process, what they have already tried, and what they think the issue might be would have made it easier for the respondents to answer their question in a timely fashion.

Do as I say not as I Do

Asking questions in a specific way will elicit a quicker more detailed response. When gathering information for your post you may even figure out the answer yourself. It helps you think about and understand more thoroughly what you are stuck on and your guess as to why. When the thoughts are bouncing around inside your head in can be difficult sometimes to see the inconsistencies in what you are trying to do. When you are trying to get an answer from an open forum follow the format laid out by the first example and you will have a much higher likely hood that you get the answer you are looking for and not the dreaded “marked as duplicate”.