A guide to asking dev questions 💁

Five golden rules to asking great dev questions:

• Summary of problem inside of the title
  
• Be as clear and concise as possible defining the probem in the body
  
• Include a minimal code snippet to reproduce the problem
  
• Include a (few) tag(s)for others to find your question
  
• Proof-read your question before publication
  

Creating dev questions, stepwise

1. Check if your particular dev question is unique on stackoverflow (or elsewhere).
2. Copy-paste a code snippet and indent it properly (control - k). Structure the question based on the snippet.
3. Break the question down in 3 to 5 keywords.
4. Adjust to the body in full sentences based on your chosen keywords. Add to the body in two parts: (1) an introduction and (2) the core of the issue.
5. Inside of the second part uou define your problem as clear and specific as possible. Adjust rich-detailed information to make yourself understandable and others able to reproduce the problem.
6. Inside of the first part you add some context of your project (web-app, mobile, etc..).
7. Tag-wise: include the (1) programming language you’re referring to, (2) property names (like “div” or “border”) followed by (3) (some) keywords related to the question.
8. Generate a summary of your problem inside of the title (1 sentence).

*In case you’re new to coding, follow the “guided-mode” on stack overflow to create your question.

Examples of good questions

Clear description of the context. Title is descriptive. Problem is specific and understandable: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/63753779/how-to-fill-a-column-based-on-adjacent-column-value-in-excel

Simple and clear question that many PHP users run into: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4238433/php-how-to-create-a-newline-character

Context is highly relevant: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50644667/xdebug-on-port-9000-with-a-virtual-machine-eaddrinuse-9000

Examples of bad questions

Non-descriptive title: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/63778503/i-am-getting-an-error-mentioned-below-what-does-it-mean

Too generic, not possible to reproduce the problem: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/63778663/my-macbook-pro-is-extremely-slow-all-of-sudden

Using StackOverflow to outsource your job in a strictly selfish way, which is not useful to anyone else: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/63778465/how-i-can-design-like-the-picturein-assignment-link-in-bootstrap-4-5