Unlocking Success Through the Smart Way

25 Jan 2024

Unlocking Success Through the Smart Way

StacksOverflow?

Stacks Overflow. A resort for all developers that’ll guarantee them to help when it comes down to debugging or even overall, finishing their code.. Or is it? Stack Overflow is a powerful platform that takes the collective expertise of the community of developers. However, its effectiveness lies in the ability of users to ask specific programming questions. Smart questions to be exact.

Maximizing your solutions

The platform’s structure encourages users to provide clear details, fostering a culture of precision and clarity in problem descriptions. With a vast repository of previously answered questions, Stack Overflow serves as a valuable knowledge base, aiding developers in overcoming any challenges, learning new concepts, and problem-solving. This collaborative nature ensures that individuals not only find solutions to their queries but also gain different insights into their practices and more diverse approaches within the ever-evolving field of software development.

For Example

This is a link to the example StacksOverflow

Here is an example of asking a smart question. Though the concept of the question is not too complicated, the user’s ability to precisely ask what he/she wanted led to the solution of his/her code.

In their question, the user first described the goal. Not a step, or the middle of some random lines of code. If you are trying to find out how to do something, you should always begin by describing the goal. Often, people who need technical help have a high-level goal in mind and get stuck on one particular path towards the goal. However, they don’t realize that the path can’t be answered if the overall question is not understood.

The user also provided an example of what they wanted their expected output to be. That indeed is a great usage of being explicit when asking about your question. Never ask a question that is too open-minded as those questions are quite time-consuming. And just like you, everyone else is most likely busy as well.

Also don’t ask others to debug your broken code without giving a hint of what sort of problem they should be searching for. Posting lines of code, and saying “it doesn’t work”, will only get you ignored. Thus always be precise and informative about your problem.

The user also provided their current progress at the time. This helps show users that you are also devoted and determined to find the solution and that you at least tried. Not just some lazy person who just instantly wants an answer without any attempt to deal with it themselves.

def solution(words):
    res = 0
    n = len(words)
    for i in range(n):
        for j in range(i + 1, n):
            if words[i] == words[j] or words[i].startswith(words[j]) or words[j].startswith(words[i]):
                res += 1
        
    return res

With that said. It was only time before the user finally got their smart answer. One that not only satisfied their request but also brought in new knowledge and new concepts. Such as the recommendation of using a stack instead:

Smart Answers

Smart questions on Stack Overflow pave the way for intelligent answers by providing clear, specific details. This precision enables the developer community to understand and address the issue effectively, fostering a culture of expertise exchange and collaborative problem-solving for the benefit of those all within the world of coding.