In today’s world, I understand that there is vast and large amount of ways to find out information. It can get pretty overwhelming, especially when you don’t know where to start. Most can be solved by a quick google - or whatever your prefered search engine of choice is - search, and which, according to Eric Raymond’s article, is something that is referred to a lot when it is obvious that you haven’t put the effort.
But what if it can’t be solved by a simple google search?
Along with a quick and easy google search, we have forums and question-and-answer sites to help us, they are, however, a last resort. It’s something that I’ve always understood. Don’t ask until you’re entirely sure it can’t be found. It’s essentially what my mom would tell me when I was younger, “look with your eyes and not your mouth.” Which pretty much means to put in the effort and not complain.
Google searches with refinement, official sites of your problem device/program, forums relating to your problem, and previously asked questions. It’s obvious, even with being on a question-and-answer site for a brief time, people tend to not like duplicate questions. Having a question about your specific topic would be helpful in avoiding that. At least it’s a start to get us going.
After looking at a few questions, I discovered that sometimes, it’s not the subject of the question that matters, rather it’s how it’s asked that truly matters. Looking through a bunch of questions in StackOverflow made me realize that while some don’t care how it’s asked, most people will take note. Keeping this in mind, I need to take extra precaution in everything, even titles, something that I never really paid much attention to in the first place.
Nothing really matters unless you truly know what you don’t know.
That makes no sense, but that’s the point. We can’t have a path to follow unless we know what our destination is. We can wander aimlessly, following roads and paths that lead us to dead ends or even in worse places than we started at. While it may help us get our heads in order, it isn’t going to help us one bit.
Once we have our goal in mind, we need to do it right. There’s an easy way and a smart way. While we may be tempted to take shortcuts, thinking that just because we can see that path ahead, it will be fine. Well, that’s not the case. It’s a long and difficult road, and while it may not be what we want to hear, we can’t have someone else walk the path for us, we have to do it ourselves.
We must seek guidance, not answers.
Questions must have a clear objective. There are times where it does not matter how easy the task may seem, the fact that we are willing to put in the effort is what attracts their attention. It can’t be sloppy and unorganized, vague, or completely unreadable.
We have to prove that we are worth the time. And only then, we may get the guidance toward our destination.