Don't ask to ask, just ask
I hate hate hate this advice.<p>I am a complete idiot at coding. And one of the biggest barriers to getting good at it is <i>I don&#x27;t even know how to ask good questions</i>.<p>Online communities are already toxic places for newcomers. Ask a dumb question on StackOverflow and you get downvoted and griped at. I know I am an idiot! I know I don&#x27;t understand what I am asking for! This is a cry for help!<p>&gt;..which is just lazy. If you&#x27;re not willing to do the work to solve your problem, why should we?<p>When I ask a vague, dumb plea, I am intentionally trying to weed out the pedantic people who would rather write a blog post about how dumb I am than stop to help me. If they have the time to follow up, they will have the patience to help me. Everyone else should move along.<p>If everyone has to stop and think of a logical and formalized way to ask a question, no one will bother asking for help. Think of every time you have reached outside of your domain - you would be so much worse off if you spent the entire time researching the right way to ask something than just asking for help.<p>In fact, I will turn it around. If you are not actually stopping to thoughtfully answer dumb questions, you are not actually teaching anyone anything.