How to ask for help regarding programming?

How to ask for help regarding programming?

Why this page?

When browsing Q&A I often found posts like "HELP" or "I DON'T KNOW" without much content. Usually they get a respond like "What's your problem" or "Show your code". As I feel it is time consuming and not an effective way to ask for help, I created this page to help you to construct your question properly.

Guidelines to post a question

There are a few guidelines you can follow, and I try to keep it short so you can move forward faster.

Be direct

Instead of posting like "Can I ask something about <programming language>?", state your question directly.

It is nice to ask in this form if in person, but we are posting questions on the web and responds take time. Viewers often look for the topic and tags (more about it later) before answering the post. If they are interested they will take a look. A more direct approach gets more attention.

Be summarize

Your topic should summarize your question.

Some people try to write the entire code in the topic and it is bad. The topic not only has a fixed length, it also hard to recognize the code. Your topic should reflect your question.

Link to the source

If your question is related to the teaching material, mentioning the course name, module name and lesson name can shorten the time for viewer finding the source.

The same goes for code coach. Best of all you are allowed to copy the link to code coach so other can jump to it directly.

Explain what the code do

In the body of your question it is best to write down your code intention, provide it with input and expected output.

Don't write your code in the body and just ask "Why it doesn't work?" Your code can run without any error message. A wrong programming logic produces unexpected output.

Share your code

If your program just takes a few lines of code, it would not be a big problem to understand your code. When your program takes 10 lines or more it would be another story.

Save your code in code bits and link your code in your post. There is a ⊕ sign or "+ insert" which allow you to link a code to your post. And I suggest "reply" to the code yourselves with a link back to the question. In the future when you review the code you can jump back to the question directly.

Use a right tag

Besides the topic and body, there is a field allow you to tag the question.

Tag can use to categorize a question. If the question is about Python, put "Python" into the tag field. If it is about a while-loop, put "while-loop" into the field. Next time when someone has a similar question and makes a search with a relevant keyword, it is more likely your post will be included in the result.

Use the search bar

There is a high chance other people asked the same question as yours.

Make use of the search bar. If your question is about loop, search with the keyword "loop". Your question may already asked by someone else.

A post example

Here comes an example on how to post a question.

Topic: Why it gives 6 instead of 5?
Tag: Python, while-loop
Body: I expected n will be increased to 5, ending the loop and prints 5. Can anyone explain what's wrong?


            n = 0

            while n <= 5:

                n = n + 1

            print(n)

In this example, we asked the question directly in the topic and gave proper tags to indicate it is about Python and while loop.

Inside the body we explained what we want the code behave and gave the expected output. And because the code is short it doesn't hurt to write it directly in the post.

Compare it with "HELP" and "I DON'T KNOW", which style do you think can get a reply faster?

If answered, mark the best answer and put "SOLVED" in the topic

If someone answered your question and you are satisfy with it, mark it as the best answer and add "SOLVED" to the question topic.

Marking an answer as best will put that at the top in the thread so other can view the answer much quicker. Adding "SOLVED" in the topic indicated the question is solved, so others can stop searching. In this way you help others too!