How to ask for help¶
Asking for help is not only welcomed but encouraged at Omni. We are here to help each other make the best calculators in the world, it’s sort of our company culture.
However, there are many ways to ask for help, some definitely better than others. So to help those with the knowledge find the solution faster and to help you fix your problem faster we need to ask the best questions.
Let’s take a look at the steps you should take before asking a question and then we will see how the perfect question looks like so that you will get the best help possible as quickly as it can be.
Before you ask for help¶
First step is preparation. At some point we all found an incomprehensible mistake that we couldn’t figure out… only to realise that we misspelled a variable name or something similar.
To avoid asking questions when we don’t really need help, we should take some steps to make sure we really have found a problem we cannot solve on our own.
Look for published calculators that have similar behaviours to what you want to achieve.
Try a different browser or different parameters and see if there’s still an error.
Debug your code, try to see if you can find the answer on your own.
If it’s a JavaScript related question, ask Google.
If it’s an Omni/Calculator related question, search the documentation.
Once you know you are actually dealing with a problem you cannot solve, try to find more information about it. You can try many things, including (but not limited to):
Find what values create an error situation and which don’t.
Try to find the conflicting variable(s) or operations.
Track the error down to the smallest piece of code possible, the source of the problem.
Once you have all that information, it’s time to write down the question in a way that is easy to understand.
How to ask the best question¶
To compose a comprehensive as well as comprehensible call for help we need to include certain information. In the same way we assume our user’s don’t have any previous knowledge, you should assume that the helper knows nothing about your code or calculator.
Ideally you would include information about the variables that cause the error including the conflicting values or steps to reproduce the error. Include a link to the calculator and instructions about what piece of the code is causing problems (line numbers are ideal).
If you know it, explain what changes you made before the error showed up. This is very useful if you cannot find what variables or values are causing problems.
If you have tried different solutions before asking, include a short description of what you did and what result you got. This will save a lot of time to the helper.
If you have a guess as to what it could be, also include it, even if you wouldn’t know how to solve such issue.
Needless to say, when you ask for help you should be polite, respectful and patience. This doesn’t mean necessarily saying _please_ and _thank you_ after every sentence, but they never harm. There is a good enough vibe between us that this point needs no emphasis, but just remember not to take you coding-frustration with others. :)
The perfect question¶
I know all these rules and advices seem daunting at first, but the reality is that pretty much all of us do it right most of the times. This is just a structured written version of the steps we pretty much always take before asking questions, so that we never forget.
To make it even easier for those times when you forget how to ask, I will show you a brief example of a very good question.
“Hello, I have a problem with my calculator: [link to calculator]. When the user selects a country in the value select it sometimes changes the selected option to another country. For example, when I select Spain it calculates everything correctly but it shows Poland as the selected country. It might have something to do with the fact that some countries have the same values associated. Does anyone know how to solve this issue?”