Asking questions as much as possible is a great way to learn in a programming environment, and this type of behavior can also be applied learning anything in life in general, and students should not be afraid from asking a “dumb” question, since there are no dumb questions. However, there exists certain types of questions that are “ineffective”, which does not provide enough learning values from answering that question. One of the key factors that distinguishes the smart questions and inefficient questions comes from the purpose of why this question is asked.
One of the biggest mistakes people make is asking a question that can be simply googled instead. Taking the example of this thread (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/94591/what-is-the-maximum-value-for-an-int32), The question only asks for what is the maximum value you can get from int32. These types of questions where questions do not invoke any type of creativity, but rather a simple “what’s the answer of this question?” does not gain any value at all, because the people with zero knowledge of what programming is can answer this question back to the user in less than 10 seconds through googling. It does not require any type of computer science expert to answer this question, and even if they try to answer this question in a best way for the user to gain any value from possible, the maximum they can gain is, it’s “2,147,483,647 because 2^32 - 1”, and nothing else.
(https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8881291/why-is-char-preferred-over-string-for-passwords) In this thread, the user asks the reasoning behind why an array of char (char[]) is more preferred in a computer programming computer environment rather than using string. This question is a great example of smart question because the question is aroused from how this user obtained the questions, which is from the users interacting with the computer science material, and the creativity and curiosity are the sources that drove this question to come about during the process. This question does require someone who actually knows what they are doing, instead of a random person on the internet that knows nothing about the subject. The question is looking for the “reasonings” behind using a certain type of variable over the other variable in a certain question, and in this question it has to do it with a password. This question cannot be answered simply, such as “it’s this” or “yes or no” questions.
Before asking a computer science related question on Stack Overflow, stop a second and have this thought over your head: “Can I just google this question instead of asking an expert?”