Before Pressing Enter
NullPointerException, Segmentation Fault, Compilation Error. When your screen is filled to the brim with errors, it’s easy to panic and press that S.O.S. button on forums. But stop yourself, don’t do that ever. When you are panicking, you won’t be able to express yourself correctly for others to help you. Step 1 is to calm your self down if you are panicking.
Necessary Steps
Before posting on forums about your urgent question, try to narrow down the issue on your end first. By pinpointing the problem, this will allow you to find the answer more quickly on Google or help those that came across your post on forums to understand what is causing the error. When the almighty Google doesn’t hold the answer you search for, that’s when you turn to forums. While typing out your post, don’t paste your entire program code in there, don’t make others feel like they are doing your work. The post should contain the part of the program where the error is occurring, what problem you think is causing the issue, and maybe with attempts you have done to try to solve the error. This will allow other people to get the full picture without giving off the impression of “Please do my work for me.” Lastly, make sure you have posted the question in the right section of the forum. You don’t have to post your questions on a cute animal pictures forum.
Examples
In the bad question example, the user pretty much did a copy and paste of their entire program without narrowing down their problem.
The good example, the user narrowed down their problem to simply wanting to calculate the size of their array when it’s stored on the HEAP. Included only part of the code where the issue occurs and his attempts.
Asking smart question would help you narrow down potential issues to a single point, like debugging. This can help you understand where the true problem lies and help you debug similar error in the future. But most importantly, asking smart question would help many more in the future to find the potential solution they are looking for.