There is no such thing as dumb questions. If anything, asking any question about a particular topic is one of the smartest things to do as you gain knowledge to satisfy your curiosity. If anything, it is worse if you do not ask any questions when you reall need it. This transfer of knowledge is what allows everyone to learn and improve upon themselves. However, to be able to get the answer you want as fast as possible while also maing it easy to answer requires some work on your part.
The main thing you want to do when creating a smart question is be as specific as possible. Being specific allows people to give specific answers. If your question is not specific enough, it can lead to broad, unhelpful answers. You can compare this specificness to giving directions. If your directions are not clear enough, the chances of the person you are talking being lost increases. Another thing to do is to state the scenario to where you need the question answered and what types of solutions you have atetempted to fix it. Doing this will allow your answerers to weed out possibilities and give you answers that you would not have come up with on your own. Also, you would not want to get an answer that you have already tested out
“How can I prevent SQL Injection in PHP?” Although the question itself may not be in-line with the standards of a smart questions, the asker gives brief context of the scenario on why he needs to know this. He even provides some code to give those answering more clarity on the situation.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60174/how-can-i-prevent-sql-injection-in-php
“Why is processing a sorted array much faster than processing an unsorted array?” What makes this not so great of an example is that this is common knowledge known with those that are even beginner programers. Not only that, but this is also a type of question that can be answered without the use of computer science. Using logistics would be another reasonable way to answer this question. It is a type of question where there should be many scources already available to explain this. Another bad example would be “what is a null pointer exception?” Once again, common knowledge for those who have expereince with coding. What makes these questions worse is that they do not give any context of their problem, which may lead to misunderstandings in the answer that they are given or being asked to clarify more about the subject.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/218384/what-is-a-nullpointerexception-and-how-do-i-fix-it
Although there are no such things as dumb questions, there do exist smart questions. Stackoverflow is a great resource to be able to get all your needs from knowledgable individuals. Appreciate the effort of those who take their time off to help others. Soon, when you gain more experience, you will be one answering other people’s questions.