Don't ask to ask, just ask
I hate hate hate this advice.I am a complete idiot at coding. And one of the biggest barriers to getting good at it is I don't even know how to ask good questions.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't understand what I am asking for! This is a cry for help!>..which is just lazy. If you're not willing to do the work to solve your problem, why should we?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.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.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.