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Asking Questions 101

Prep

Today we're going to start learning a formal language of developer questions. We will begin with this basic format:

  1. What I did
  2. What I expected
  3. What actually happened

This format helps to find the discrepancies between expectations and reality. (This is the gap in our understanding.)

It's also an efficient way to share our current understanding with others.

Expectation vs reality

When we are surprised by an outcome it usually means we had a mental model of the world that didn't predict the world accurately. Don't panic when this happens, it's completely expected for even experienced developers to run into surprises. We use these gaps as signs that we need to update our mental models.

To develop our understanding of coding, we will:

Predict & Explain

  1. Make a prediction by explaining what the outcome will be
  2. Play computer - "run" the model in our heads and predict (say before) what the outcome will be

Try

  1. Code up our idea
  2. Run the code

Compare and Update

  1. Compare the outcome with our prediction
  2. Explain the gap between our prediction and what actually happened
  3. Update our understanding

This process is cyclical.

graph LR
A[Predict]
B[Explain]
C[Try]
D[Compare]
E[Update]
A --> B
B --> C
C --> D
D --> E
E --> A

Updating the right model

If you stuck and can't explain the gap in your mental model, then it's time to ask a question!

When we ask questions, it's important that we share our current mental model as part of your question so that other people can test the right thing, focus on the mis-understanding. Then together you can get quickly to a shared understanding of your specific problem.

Let's look at how asking questions helps you update your mental model with an example.

  1. Set a timer for 5 minutes.
  2. Popcorn around the room and each person give an example of a bad way to ask a question until the timer goes off. For example:

Argh I can't make it work please help me!

Why are these not useful?

  1. Set a timer for 10 minutes.
  2. Popcorn around the room and each person give a reason the previous question was bad until the timer goes off. For example:

What is it? What are you trying to do? In what way is it not working? Be specific! Share what you see. Do you have a link? What do you want it to do?

Exercise ground rules

Before we get to the next exercise, let's just set some ground rules here:

  1. The goal is not to complete the exercise; the goal is to learn
  2. The smart thing to do is to focus on the questions you cannot (yet) answer

Split into groups of 2-5 people. Set a whole class timer for 30 minutes.

Confound yourselves

  • Pick a problem from the bank.
  • As a group, make a prediction about what you think the answer is, and write it down.
  • Test your prediction. Try it out using the dev tools.
  • Compare your prediction with the outcome.

What happened? Is there a gap in your understanding?

Keep doing this until you find a problem you can't solve, then write up your mental model using this format:

  1. What I did
  2. What I expected. Make sure you include your prediction here
  3. What actually happened

Include as much context as you can, including links, line numbers, sample code, etc. Use code blocks to mark up your code. If you use screenshots, they should only show the visual render (never screenshot code - paste code as text).

Now post your write up of the question in #cyf-ask-tech-stuff.

🧑🏾‍💻🙋 Developer questions contain

  1. 🔗 Links 👍
  2. Objectives - what are you actually trying to do? 👍
  3. 🖼️ Screenshots of UI 👍
  4. 📝 Code blocks 👍
  5. 📷 Screenshots of code 🙅

📚 Further reading