Questions drive learning. I am all about asking questions. I don't always ask them in the most concise way, but the more I ask them, the better I get at forming them. The only way to understand a concept I am struggling with is by asking someone to explain it or walk me through it, or ask Google, of course. Otherwise I'm left stuck with just my brain to figure it out, and that's usually no good!
This has come up for me a lot in my time at DBC. Any time I think about the idea of learning all of this programming on my own, I think about the amount I learned by being able to ask questions of my peers, my guides, and the administrators. There is no way I could have gotten to even this rudimentary level of programming ability without the resources DBC has for me.
Now, part of this blog assignment has to do with HOW to ask questions. What constituted a good question. Here are my guidelines that I would like to follow:
- Do research first
- Have I checked Google?
- Have I looked at related websites?
- Have my searches included the right keywords?
- Find the right source to ask
- What topic is this question even under?
- Do I know anyone personally who can answer this for me?
- Have I searched the web for sources based on keywords that can actually point me towards better sources?
- Form the question
- How would I want to be asked this question?
- What do I expect my answer to look like, so I can phrase the question correctly?
- Do I need to break this question up into several smaller questions, or vice versa?
- Ask the damn question, already!