2.2. You have to give information to get information.

2.2. You have to give information to get information.
	2. Asking Good Questions

There's nothing more frustrating than getting a question like

“When I try to compile my solution to the first assignment, I get an error message. What's wrong?”

Grrr. What was the (exact) text of the error message? Was this on a Unix or Windows NT machine? What compiler were you using? What compiler options did you set?

No, I'm not kidding. I get messages like this all the time. And it wastes my time as a question answerer to have to prompt for all the necessary information. It also means a significant delay to the student in getting an answer, because we have to go through multiple exchanges of messages before I even understand the question.

Copy-and-Paste is your Friend

The single most important thing you can do to speed answers to your questions is to be specific. I'm not psychic. I can only respond to the information you provide to me.

Never, ever paraphrase an error message (“I got a message that said something about a bad type.”),
Never, ever paraphrase a command that you typed in that gave unexpected results (“I tried lots of different compilation options but none of them worked.”)
Never, ever paraphrase your source code ("I tried adding a loop, but it didn't help.")
Never, ever paraphrase your test data (“I tried running the program on some simple tests, but it failed.”).

The problem with all of these is that they omit the details that would let me diagnose the problem. And it's not all that hard to provide that info. Error messages can be copied and pasted into your email or Forum posting. The commands you typed and the responses you received can be copied-and-pasted from your ssh/xterm session into your email or posting. So can sections of code or, in most cases, test data.[1]

Copy-and-paste is your friend. If you insist on paraphrasing, omitting the details I need to figure out what is really going on, I will just have to write back and ask you for the information. And that brings us to...

If I Ask You a Question, Answer It

I often respond to a student's question with further questions of my own [2], sometimes to get more info I need, sometimes to guide the student towards an answer I think they should be able to find for themselves.

It's surprising how often students ignore my questions and either never respond at all, respond as if my questions were rhetorical, or, if I have asked 2 or 3 questions, pick the one that's easiest to answer and ignore the rest.

This pretty much guarantees that the dialog will grind to a halt as I wind up repeating myself, asking the same questions as before, and some students go right on ignoring my questions, ...

^[1]Note that this information is almost always plain text. Unless you really need to show me graphics, please do not send me graphic snapshots ("screen prints") of your screen containing the error message. Not only are these often hard to read, I just can't afford to deal with hundreds of messages that use tens or hundreds of kilobytes to show me a few dozen bytes of text.

^[2]Teachers since Socrates have always done this, and students have always been annoyed at it. But who are we to argue with history?


2.1. Identification	\|	3. Appendix: Copying and Pasting from telnet/ssh/xterm Sessions