Working with other people can be daunting. You are always afraid of what to say; thinking that if you are wrong, you'll be looked down upon by everyone. While, it might happen, and let's be honest not everyone you will work with will be a saint, you shouldn't let that prevent you from saying what's on your mind.
When you're on a meeting, asking your peers to explain a topic you have no understanding of isn't a bad idea. You might not be the only one who feels the same way. By asking a question, you are allowing everyone to be on the same page, and not just those who are talking.
Never ask to "know", alway ask to "understand"
Let's put you on a scenario. You are new to coding, and in this week's lecture your professor talks about switch case. By the end of the lecture you were confused, you asked your professor, "what does switch do?" they provide you with a detailed answer, and be done with it.
A few days later you came across a problem when writing an assignment, when you wrote your switch, you had problems with your code continuously going through all condition even after it went through the first one. Now you're in a predicament, and confused again as to what to do. You asked your professor again, and he explained that you are meant to add a break at the end of each case. The entire problem could have been avoided if you simply ask "how does switch work"? Of which you will be provided with multiple scenarios, and how the entire process goes about.
Of course with a question regarding "switch" it is very unlikely for anyone who has a low-mid level of understanding of programming to not even mention something as small as "break". However, if you consider topics that are much more complex, and require deeper understanding, the impact of your question can drastically affect how the information is going to be provided.
Questions leads to even more questions
During a meeting this week in regards to a project. We were discussing about admin's ability to control a student's account.
While everyone was discussing a myriad of things in regards to UI and logic I noticed a problem. I recall they mention that the deletion of an account follows a sequential order dns-records -> certificates -> user, that's when a question popped into my mind "what would happen when the user creates a new records just as they are being deleted by the admin?"
I was afraid of asking it at first. "What if I'm just overthinking? The likeliness of that scenario occurring is close to 0, and I'll probably look dumb," I thought to myself. But I swallowed up my fear, and waited for an opportunity to ask my question. It turns out that we didn't even considered the possibility, and such problems did occur in past projects according to our leader, so now we are developing a deterrent. It wasn't a huge issue, but it did provide me with an insight as to the importance of asking questions.
Conclusion
Always ask questions with the mindset of wanting to learn; it helps you deeper your understanding of the work instead of simply knowing the answer to it. When you have a question, it is never bad to ask. If it's simple, then the answer would take only a few seconds(not a lot to deter the entire discussion). At the end of the day, us developers are in a constant state of learning, questions help us deeper our understanding of the digital world we dipped our toe in.
Top comments (1)
Thank you for writing this! I tend to worry a lot too that I'll just annoy people by asking questions, so I really did need the reminder. I really appreciate you sharing the anecdote about that edge case you pointed out! I'm very much the "what if?" kind of person, and I usually think of it as something I need to suppress--I hadn't really thought about cases like this where voicing my random "what if" could actually help address a problem that other people hadn't thought about. Here's hoping I can be a little braver from here on out!