Perhaps you can relate with my story. I almost always go online to find what I am looking for, but almost never post questions, answers, or comments on forums, comments sections, or other online communication feeds. I think the term for this is ‘lurker’, but there may be other terms that describe this kind of person, which I am a prime example of in this case.
However, as I am getting deeper into my studies as a computer engineering student, I find that I am getting faced with increasingly complex problems and it is starting to dawn on me that asking a good question or two can save me a lot of the frustration that merely brute forcing things on my own would cause.
But there always runs that risk with posting online: What if you inadvertently post something that ruins your online reputation?
This is probably the biggest thing that has kept me so silent over the internet.
I mean, of course, if I can figure out something on my own, there is no need to post a new question (in public, as opposed to a more private message). The internet is extremely vast and I think it is very difficult at this point for someone like me to think of a good question that is completely new. Perhaps even people with millions of lines of code under there belts struggle with thinking of questions that are completely new simply because the internet is that vast as of writing and it’s only getting vaster as we breathe!
So maybe posting a new question for the world to see won’t be quite as common for me. That’s fine and dandy and all. How about answering people’s questions?
‘But I’m too busy to answer people’s questions. But there are better people than me to answer those questions.’
Now it’s true, there is already so much information on the internet. So if I were to start answering people’s questions, a common concern might be that I am contributing to the information overload that we are currently experiencing, because the internet is still getting vaster as we breathe! The information overload is so overbearing that there’s even a term called ‘analysis paralysis’ that refers to the phenomenon of being so overwhelmed with information that it ends up giving you so many decisions to make and it paralyzes you instead of empowering you to take action, which defeats the entire purpose of information. And I am contributing to that with my answering of people’s questions in public.
But on the flip side, we’re human. We’re not perfect. And I’m willing to bet that the brightest experts on Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow and all the other online communication feeds had to start somewhere and that they had to learn to become the experts in their field from being completely ignorant like I am right now. I think in case, balance is the key. I might still be silent most of the time, but I can at least keep an eye out for opportunities to ask better questions if my endless hours of Googling and book-reading isn’t enough.
I think when starting out on asking questions online publicly, it helps to see examples of questions we should and should not ask. To start, here is an example of what I think is a ‘not-so-smart’ question.
‘Not-so-smart’ question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30150304/uncaught-referenceerror-documet-is-not-defined
Now this is sort of an exaggerated example (or at least, I think it is). I don’t know much about HTML, but I think the biggest complaint about this question is that the goal of the author is unclear. I don’t know what is it the author is trying to accomplish with the author’s code. There is also a lot of things unclear about the author’s question. Also, the author’s spelling and grammar is off. In general, it feels as though the author’s question was hastily-made. Again, this example seems rather exaggerated, and when posting questions, comments, or answers to other people’s questions, flaws in what you post can emerge in more subtle ways. It’s not the end of the world, but just something to be aware of.
Now for an example of a ‘smart’ question (or at least, it seems smart to me).
‘Smart’ question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/111102/how-do-javascript-closures-work
As of writing, I don’t claimed to have gone through all of the examples of all of the answers that were given to the author, but it seems like if you were experienced enough in Javascript and actually read through the answers, you would get a better understanding of how to use closures more effectively and become a better programmer in general. The author did attempt to read up on closures using the Scheme example from Wikipedia, but it seems like the author needed more helpful explanations of the concepts. I think that it is valid to ask for more clear explanations if you’ve searched exhaustively and know that the currently available explanations are murky, abstract, or unclear and there may be someone out there who can make it clearer for others.
I think a big takeaway for me at least, is that I should be aware of how some online communities are different from (or similar to) other communities so that as a software engineer, I can ask appropriate questions to each online community I’m familiar with. Posting a well thought-out question can save a lot of time and frustration as a software engineer, and answering people’s questions can be a great way to contribute to an online community. So with that, I hope I can gain a lot of value from breaking the silence as a software engineer.