F1 How to Ask Smart Questions

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Signup and FAQ

Before starting the first task, please remember to "Signup" and carefully read the content in section "FAQ".

Create and Write Your Own Learning Log

You need to fill in your learning log based on your daily study progress. You may refer to the following format for details: Learning Log(Template). Teaching Assistants (TAs) will evaluate your study performance in the subsequent learning process, and this will be one of the dimensions they consider.

Read "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way"

Your first task in OSOC is to read the articles "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way".

Reading these articles is not meant to waste your time or discourage you from asking questions. Rather, it is intended to help you understand what is considered "correct." When you’re willing to put effort into these correct practices and raise questions in a professional manner, you’ve already taken the first step toward becoming a professional.

STFW, RTFM, RTFSC

Try to find and understand the meanings of the three acronyms in the above article.

You may feel offended by the F word, but in fact, its literal meaning is never the point. It simply reflects the legend behind the three acronyms and makes them easier to remember. For example, RTFSC originated from the first words written by Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux, in a reply to an email dated April 1, 1991 — a message that is still available on the Internet mailing list. Interestingly, Andrew S. Tanenbaum, in his article Lessons Learned from 30 Years of MINIX, cites this email as an example of how easy it was to learn the MINIX operating system: Linus Torvalds, as a student, learned MINIX in about 10 days.

Learning _Not_ to Ask > Learning to Ask

Many students, more or less, tend to hold this viewpoint.:

I ask an expert for advice, and the expert gives me the answer, so I've learned.

But have you ever considered this: when you join a company in the future, and your boss asks you to try out a technical solution; or when you join a research group at a university, and your supervisor assigns you to explore a new topic? You might think: there will surely be capable colleagues or senior students to guide me. However, the reality is that your colleagues have their own KPIs to meet, and senior students are focused on their own projects. No one wants to be chased by questions all day. Sooner or later, there won’t be an expert providing the answers. How will you complete your tasks then?

If you feel like you can't handle it, you are likely lacking the ability to solve problems independently.

But fortunately, this ability can be trained. The reason why the experts around you became experts is that they developed the ability to independently solve problems earlier than you did. While you are still asking them what may seem like naive questions, they have already solved countless tricky problems. In fact, your abilities are directly proportional to your investment in independent problem-solving. When an expert gives you the answer, it showcases their abilities, not yours. Therefore, to develop the ability to independently solve problems, it's more important to adjust your mindset: when you learn, you should make every effort to solve all the problems you encounter on your own (of course, excluding issues caused by framework code defects).

If You're Someone Who Truly Enjoys Helping Others

Take the infamous PA experiment at Nanjing University as an example. We've seen this situation too many times: at the beginning of each semester, there are always a few enthusiastic senior students in the group who meticulously answer the various questions of the new students. These new students indeed feel the warmth of the seniors shielding them from the harsh PA training. However, after a month or two, these enthusiastic seniors suddenly disappear, leaving the new students to wander in the cold wind of PA, waiting for answers. Meanwhile, another group of students, through the struggles and challenges of those one or two months, have developed the right mindset and skills, growing into professionals capable of standing on their own, continuing to move forward under the pressure of PA. As for the mysterious reasons behind the sudden disappearance of these helpful seniors, we can only speculate. Perhaps they felt the pressure of their own academic workload, or maybe they became weary of answering endless questions, or they suddenly realized that the help they provided to the new students wasn't really helping them. Regardless, the new students are now unable to complete the PA training independently because they will face even more difficult problems than those at the start of the semester.

Therefore, we do not deny the sense of accomplishment that helping your peers brings, but we believe there are many more serious issues that need to be considered:

What if some student asked a simply question, can you drill down to the root cause of it?

When a student cannot solve the problem without coming to you, were you truly helping them with what you did before?

More importantly, can you take responsibility for these students' future?

If we were to ask, "What do you hope this student will grow into?" I believe everyone’s goal is the same: we hope that, in the future, they will become professionals capable of standing on their own. But at the same time, you must recognize the laws of learning: this requires long-term professional training. If simply telling them the answer to a problem makes them a professional, then how can we honor the sweat and efforts of the seasoned engineers who have been working tirelessly at the frontlines for years?

So, every time you give them an answer, every time you help them solve a problem, you are depriving them of the opportunity to receive professional training. Instead, if you really want to help them you can try to point out the missing concepts and skills without interfering with their training, let them do the research/read the manual/look at the code if they need to, guide them to come up with their own thinking about the problem, and then try to summarize the solution indenpendently. It's not easy for you or for them, but learning is a costly process: if you make it easy for them to get the answer to a problem, then they won't get the training they need by solving the problem.

Channels for Asking Questions

• Group chat (recommended): students who are more proactive have more potential to be developed into teaching assistants. (Group Chat QR Codes are in "Signup")
• Private chat with TAs (Note: TAs may have other tasks and may not be able to respond promptly).