Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Typographical fixes to match original work #54

Open
wants to merge 3 commits into
base: master
Choose a base branch
from
Open

Typographical fixes to match original work #54

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
3 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
801b153
Escape '<' and '>' in section "When asking about code"
Vizaxo Sep 7, 2022
fe6b2c9
Restore space between words to match original
Vizaxo Sep 7, 2022
ff3d4a6
Fix spacing in "My {program, ..." answer
Vizaxo Sep 7, 2022
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
8 changes: 4 additions & 4 deletions How-To-Ask-Questions-The-Smart-Way.md
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -387,7 +387,7 @@ So it is useful to frame your question to minimize the time commitment required

### When asking about code

Don't ask others to debug your broken code without giving a hint what sort of problem they should be searching for. Posting a few hundred lines of code, saying "it doesn't work", will get you ignored. Posting a dozen lines of code, saying "after line 7 I was expecting to see <x>, but <y> occurred instead" is much more likely to get you a response.
Don't ask others to debug your broken code without giving a hint what sort of problem they should be searching for. Posting a few hundred lines of code, saying "it doesn't work", will get you ignored. Posting a dozen lines of code, saying "after line 7 I was expecting to see \<x\>, but \<y\> occurred instead" is much more likely to get you a response.

The most effective way to be precise about a code problem is to provide a minimal bug-demonstrating test case. What's a minimal test case? It's an illustration of the problem; just enough code to exhibit the undesirable behavior and no more. How do you make a minimal test case? If you know what line or section of code is producing the problematic behavior, make a copy of it and add just enough supporting code to produce a complete example (i.e. enough that the source is acceptable to the compiler/interpreter/whatever application processes it). If you can't narrow it down to a particular section, make a copy of the source and start removing chunks that don't affect the problematic behavior. The smaller your minimal test case is, the better (see [the section called “Volume is not precision”](http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#volume)).

Expand All @@ -399,7 +399,7 @@ If you simply want a code review, say as much up front, and be sure to mention w

Hackers are good at spotting homework questions; most of us have done them ourselves. Those questions are for *you* to work out, so that you will learn from the experience. It is OK to ask for hints, but not for entire solutions.

If you suspect you have been passed a homework question, but can't solve it anyway, try asking in a user group forum or (as a last resort) in a “user” list/forum of a project. While the hackers *will*spot it, some of the advanced users may at least give you a hint.
If you suspect you have been passed a homework question, but can't solve it anyway, try asking in a user group forum or (as a last resort) in a “user” list/forum of a project. While the hackers *will* spot it, some of the advanced users may at least give you a hint.

### Prune pointless queries

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -527,7 +527,7 @@ Here are some classic stupid questions, and what hackers are thinking when they
| **Q:** | Can I convert an AcmeCorp document into a TeX file using the Bass-o-matic file converter? |
| **A:** | Try it and see. If you did that, you'd (a) learn the answer, and (b) stop wasting my time. |
| **Q:** | My {program, configuration, SQL statement} doesn't work |
| **A:** | This is not a question, and I'm not interested in playing Twenty Questions to pry your actual question out of you — I have better things to do. On seeing something like this, my reaction is normally of one of the following:do you have anything else to add to that?oh, that's too bad, I hope you get it fixed.and this has exactly what to do with me? |
| **A:** | This is not a question, and I'm not interested in playing Twenty Questions to pry your actual question out of you — I have better things to do. On seeing something like this, my reaction is normally of one of the following: do you have anything else to add to that? oh, that's too bad, I hope you get it fixed. and this has exactly what to do with me? |
| **Q:** | I'm having problems with my Windows machine. Can you help? |
| **A:** | Yes. Throw out that Microsoft trash and install an open-source operating system like Linux or BSD.Note: you *can* ask questions related to Windows machines if they are about a program that does have an official Windows build, or interacts with Windows machines (i.e., Samba). Just don't be surprised by the reply that the problem is with Windows and not the program, because Windows is so broken in general that this is very often the case. |
| **Q:** | My program doesn't work. I think system facility X is broken. |
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -619,4 +619,4 @@ When you release software or write patches for software, try to follow the guide

## Acknowledgements

Evelyn Mitchell contributed some example stupid questions and inspired the “How To Give A Good Answer” section. Mikhail Ramendik contributed some particularly valuable suggestions for improvements.
Evelyn Mitchell contributed some example stupid questions and inspired the “How To Give A Good Answer” section. Mikhail Ramendik contributed some particularly valuable suggestions for improvements.