How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

[Kevin D. Clark]

Ben Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com> writes:

>  I've very often also found that while framing up a question in a
> "smart" fashion, I'll realize what I haven't done but should, or
> that I don't understand the situation as well as I should.  In the
> process of then filling in those gaps, I find the problem and get
> things working that much faster.

Clearly Ben and I like that document for a lot of the same reasons.

This point that Ben touches on here...this is one of my favorite
points.  I mean, for example, I just spent...many hours this week
struggling with a particular problem.  Quite honestly, I was trying to
work with something that I'd never worked with before, and I spent
many hours this week trying to figure out which way was up.  There
were many sub-problems that I had to solve in order to solve the
overall problem, and for each sub-problem I struggled to come up with
the "smart" question that needed to be asked (and answered) in order
to proceed.  Most of the time I didn't really have anybody to actually
pose my questions to, but still, the excercise was *very* helpful.
After a very long week, I seem to have solved my problem at roughly
6:15pm this evening.

Next week will probably be some other problem...

Kind regards,

--kevin
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