Alice: Hello! I have a problem. Please solve it.
Barbara: Umm… what exactly is your problem?
Alice: Not sure, I don’t understand it.
Barbara: Can you at least try to explain?
Alice: It’s like this other thing someone did. I want to make an exact copy!
Barbara: Aha, it looks very similar to one of our examples, have you checked them out?
Alice: It requires logic, not checking out examples!
Barbara: Ok, have a look at the documentation, it should give you a better understanding of what you can achieve, and you’ll be able to ask a more specific question.
Alice: …see above, I grow weary of having to repeat myself
Barbara: Can you at least provide a partial solution that we can have a look at and edit, a jsfiddle or something?
Alice: Oh, I really wish I could, truly… but it’s far too much effort
Does this sound familiar?
I was once a newbie. I knew little to nothing about 3d graphics not so long ago. Heck, there’s a ton I still learn every day. You’re new, you don’t know where to start - I get it. We’ve all been there.
When you ask a question - realize that you’re not entitled to other people’s time. You do not pay them. Likewise, when people answer your questions - they don’t expect anything in return. However, it’s common sense that you would take time to:
- Research your problem and understand it
- Describe the problem in sufficient detail
- Provide the current state of your solution, if possible
If you just dump your 5000 lines of code here and say “here, there’s a problem somewhere in there” - no one will want to help you, you will only create a poor impression.
Try to isolate your problem, strip it down to a bare minimum. If there’s some other code that’s absolutely necessary - try to mark it as such, to focus the reader’s attention on what really matters.
If you do ask a poor question, and someone answers it - they haven’t done you a favor. They validated your approach, next time - you will be more likely to ask a poor question again, and if you get pushback for doing so - you will be confused, like “hey, that other nice guy helped me last time, what’s up with these rude people”.
Very often you will find yourself answering your own question, if you spend time to formulate it properly. A good question is like a cross-word puzzle, it’s can be fun to solve for someone. A bad question is like a shit job.
Don’t be afraid to ask a question, just, please, spend the effort to ask it well.