Asking the Right Questions

Specificity

Q: Anyone want to pair on any of this week's challenges 1-4? I am free for most of the week after 5:00pm today.

This question is not specific enough for a proper response given that it does not standardize the times by stating a time zone. It seems like a little omission, but this little omission actually made scheduling very difficult in the beginning of DEV.

Q: Darling can you please give me your schedule for the week?

Well, she gave me her schedule, but omitted times in which she did not believe that I would have to watch our son because her mom was coming in. Well, sometimes her mom did not come in at the designated times and my schedule would be completely thrown off as a result. Also, there were other times in which her mother would come in so it did not affect my schedule, but my girlfriend would be doing a private yoga session in our house which I didn't even know about and subsequently walked in on. Whoops.

Lesson: Always think about who is going to read your question and what information they need to answer it completely. Obviously someone in a different time zone might need to know your time zone to schedule a meeting properly and I should have asked my girlfriend for a complete schedule with times she was working, seeing friends, or meeting with her mom in addition to what times I would need to watch our son.

Examples

Q: I have a question regarding learning SQL. Why don't we use XAMPP, MAMP, or MySQL Community Server along with tools like Workbench? I would think this kind of setup would be much more conductive to learning the language than sqlite3. Am I missing something?

This question is too vague. I should have specified what exactly makes this setup a good compliment to sqlite3 and included pictures and maybe even a screen cast before asking a question from someone who may be unfamiliar with the technology's capabilities.

Lesson: When asking someone to compare two things examples of each style and their pluses and minuses should be provided according to your knowledge. They can then correct any misconceptions and quickly get up to speed on any unfamiliar technologies so that they can create a detailed and informed response.

Conclusion

So it would seem specificity and examples, which are somewhat related, are where I usually fail in asking questions. I will definitely have to keep this in mind as I enter DEV.