Anh Minh Nguyen

There is no such thing as a stupid question

09 Sep 2025

At any time in your life, you have probably heard others say, “There is no such thing as a stupid question.” It is either coming from your instructors or teachers since they encourage people to speak up and ask their questions, since some other person may have the same thought but is also too shy to speak up. You also might have come across some “silly” questions from others with really obvious answers and thought to yourself, “Is that even a question?” Eric Raymond, a software developer, came up with guidelines of how a question should be asked in an open source community. His essay highlights the qualities of a “smart” and “stupid” question, and showcases readers’ possible ways to come up with a well-thought-out question that would have a higher chance of being recognized and answered.

In Raymond’s guide, he provided a list of criteria and split them into two different categories, “Before You Ask” and “When You Ask”.

Before You Ask

Before asking a technical question by e-mail, on a newsgroup, or on a website chat board, do the following:

  1. Try to find an answer by searching the archives of the forum or mailing list you plan to post to.
  2. Try to find an answer by searching the Web.
  3. Try to find an answer by reading the manual.
  4. Try to find an answer by reading an FAQ.
  5. Try to find an answer by inspection or experimentation.
  6. Try to find an answer by asking a skilled friend.
  7. If you’re a programmer, try to find an answer by reading the source code.

When You Ask

Be sensitive in choosing where you ask your question. You are likely to be ignored or written off as a loser if you:

  1. Post your question to a forum where it’s off topic
  2. Post a very elementary question to a forum where advanced technical questions are expected, or vice versa. Cross-post to too many different newsgroups
  3. Post a personal e-mail to somebody who is neither

“Smart” question:

StackOverFlow is an online community where people can ask technical-related questions and get answers. As I scrolled through the list of questions, there were tons about unfamiliar and advanced topics, but there was one that stood out to me. “Which equals operator (== vs ===) should be used in JavaScript comparisons?” asks other developers’ opinions about the difference between == and === in JavaScript, wondering if there is any performance benefit that people would use one over the other. This sparked many contributors’ interest, with 47 answers alongside 2.2 million views! The reason why I considered this as an example of a “smart” question is that the title of the post, as well as the descriptions, are clear and detailed. The user not only provided the question but also a follow-up version of it. This opened up more in-depth and detailed answers from other users, as many even included other resources for JavaScript, a chart, and a truth table in their responses.

“Stupid” question

Even though StackOverFlow contains tons of questions that sparked many users’ interest, a few posts are unclear and even out of context. Many of these “stupid” questions are closed or removed; in fact, I had to go back and edit this reflection essay since the original question I found was no longer available. “Format string to title case” is an example of a “stupid” question. The title provides context for readers about the question, but the “stupid” part about this post is its description. The user rephrased the title into question form and provided a hyperlink to illustrate the point. The worst part is that the question does not mention a specific coding language for it to be used in, which leads to contributors providing solutions in different languages. One of the answers asked “In what language?” and self-interpreted for PHP(Hypertext Preprocessor).

So…are these questions stupid?

NO, these are all valid questions. I believe that no questions are stupid. In fact, they are just poorly phrased, too vague, and even too inconsiderate of the person who asks it. The idea of a question comes from curiosity, which makes every question valid. After reading Raymond’s essay, I learned how to rephrase, organize, and present my question better by providing context so that I can receive the help I need, either in class or on internet communities such as StackOverFlow.