In the stack overflow, J. Doe asked a question which can be said to be ‘smart’ as per the Eric Raymond’s given guidelines. The question was, ‘of nothing I got this error Expression type ‘@lvalue String?’ is ambiguous without more contexts in my code’. After that, he went ahead to explain that he had tried hard to solve the problem by using other answers but all in vain. He was able to receive help from the community on how to solve that problem. One of the answers which J. Doe got from CZ54 was to avoid the combination of optional and non-optional strings as well as avoiding the unwrapping of the strings in the constructor. On top of that, PGDev confirmed that the combination of the options was the key problem and advised J. Doe to remember putting parameter data in the code for better results. The fact that J. Doe tried several times in solving the occurring error made viewers know that he was not just lazy but he participated in solving the error. He took time in looking for answers in the source code before posting and asking for help.
However, Jignesh Patel asked a question on the stack overflow which according to the answer he got from Umitk, it can be said his question was not smart enough to secure better answers. Patel was in need of knowing how to change from a given page to another page without the use of intent. This question could not sound clear to Umitk hence he answered by assuming that Patel’s modules were in different layouts. On top of that Umitk gave Patel’s question a negative voted. In total, the question received 2 negative votes and a zero positive vote.
Use of smart questions is very important especially to software engineers as they help all the programmers to gain more knowledge and understanding of software issues after posting any questions by getting very accurate, efficient and sufficient answers. Smart questions receive best answers hence avoiding some errors which can occur and lead to damages in a situation where poor and irrelevant answers are provided. I have realized that, for one to ask the best and ‘smart’ question he or she must first take time in doing several pieces of research and try much to solve the problem before involving other people. People feel hard to help in solving problems which come out of laziness.