Being Smart about becoming Smart
28 Jan 2026
Asking Questions
The deeper I dive into the field of software engineering, one thing becomes increasingly more clear. Asking questions is the backbone of being able to learn. Software Engineering is an extremely complex concept, and many concepts are very unintuitive. To succeed, you have to be able to ask good questions that inspire thoughtful responses. This will enable you to learn while doing, constantly improving your software engineering skills as you build your portfolio or work. Eric Raymond gives a list of suggestions for asking smart questions. Some of these include being clear and precise, describing your goal, and explaining what your code does and why it’s not what you want. These suggestions make it very easy for other, more experienced developers to diagnose your problem and help you solve it. Not only is this applicable to other developers on forums, but asking smart questions to LLMs that can interpret natural language help them provide much clearer and helpful responses.
A Dumb Question
To give an example, I found a question on Stack Overflow that wasn’t very smart. The post, simply titled “Google Antigravity models not loading”, has only one sentence in its body, claiming that even after restarting their laptop the Google Antigravity models are stuck on the loading screen. This is not at all a good question, as there is essentially no information given to help other individuals diagnose an issue. It reflects a lack of initiative in the person asking the question, as an app not loading could easily be caused by a number of simple issues that are easy to google and fix. The app itself could also simply be down, which can also be verified by a quick check of downdetector. The responses on Stack Exchange reflect the idiocy of the question, mostly either mocking it or complaining that they are experiencing the same thing. This did not help the user get any closer to fixing their issue, and they would have been better off not asking it in the first place. It seems to have just been that the service was down, as another user claimed several hours later that it was back online.
A Smart Question
Instead, I found a better example, also on Stack Exchange. This post, aptly titled “How to remove an item from array by value?”, is short and specific. They give an example showing what they want their code to do, say which language they are using, and mention a possible solution that has not worked for them. This is a very smart and well-asked question, with the exception that several users mention it has been asked before. With that being said, the comments are filled with useful advice, from linking similar questions, to giving solutions with and without external libraries. If I ever have an issue with software engineering, I will make sure to do my research, and if it has not already been answered, ask a smart question.
I edited this from the desktop app