Jquery, JQuery and Asking for help
A few weeks ago, I tweeted:
General service announcement: it is written “jQuery” not “Jquery” or “JQuery”… even if it comes first in a sentence!!!! ∞
Then Saturday I put out a stronger tweet, and caught some stronger feedback for it:
Test: “If you want jQuery help, which misspelling will greatly hurt your chances: a) Jquery b) JQuery c) jquery d) All of the above. ∞
At the end of the day, does it really matter how someone writes the name “jQuery”? Does it make them a better or worse programmer based on how they type it out?
Let me clarify that I have never failed to answer a question on Stack Overflow (Where I like to hang out and answer jQuery questions) because the asker typed jQuery with incorrect capitalization. I would never fail to respond to an email because the asker wrote it as Jquery or JQuery. I would hate to be that petty an individual, and I think that is the feeling some people were picking up from my tweets.
However, I can say I notice it and it bothers me when people seeking help don’t type out the library name correctly. It really is a small thing, and maybe it shouldn’t bother me, but it does. It got me thinking about things that might negatively affect a request for help, and I came up with a list of six suggestions. I hope these suggestions are helpful when you need to ask for help with open source software.
Asking for Help
If you need help with an open source project, you will often be dealing with people that 1) don’t have a lot of time and 2) must use the time they have wisely. With that in mind, here are few suggestions that might help you get answers easier:
- Take the time to make sure your question makes sense. Complete sentences, clear code examples, and links to a page demonstrating the problem all go a long way in ensuring a quality answer.
- Run spell-check before sending your question. There are at least two reasons there would be a lot of spelling errors in a question: 1) English is not the native tongue of the person requesting help 2) The person requesting help didn’t take the time ensure a quality question. Most applications have spell check. If they don’t, you can copy and paste your question to an application that does have spell check. Reason #1 is understandable and should be overlooked; reason #2 is what will stand out most to someone reading your question. It may affect that person’s decision to answer you.
- Getting back to my original statement regarding Jquery, JQuery and jquery. Some libraries have really weird spelling or capitalizations, some are more straight forward. Write the library/plugin name correctly when asking for help with it! jQuery should be very easy, but so many people get it wrong. It is like the names iPad and iPhone: the first letter is lowercase! For another example, the popular blogging platform is WordPress, not Wordpress or Word Press.
- At the very least, run a Google/Yahoo/Bing search (pick one) with some of the words from the question you plan on asking. I almost always take time to run a few searches to answer a question myself before asking on Stack Overflow or emailing someone for help. It is just common courtesy to spend some of your time before asking for the time of someone else.
- If you find the answer yourself after asking for help, be sure to let the person know you no longer need their help. Sometimes emails will sit around until there is time to answer them while in the mean time you find the answer somewhere else. It might reduce your chance of getting future emails answered if the person who takes the time to answer your question finds out they wasted their time.
- Be respectful and kind. If an open source project is screwing up your project, you have a few choices 1) use a different project 2) pay for help 3) Ask kindly for help from the project. Notice I didn’t put “4) Demand help for free.” On a very positive note, I have to say every request I have gotten for help on the few small projects I maintain have been both respectful and kind. This is really important!
What It All Means
The bottom line is this: If it appears to someone reading your question that you have not put any time into either solving the problem yourself or writing a decent request for help, they will be less likely to put any time into answering it.
Remember, it isn’t always about just getting an answer. Sometimes its about getting the right person to answer your question. For instance, there are tons of programmers answering questions on Stack Overflow, but not all of them have equal qualifications and skill. Put in the effort up front when asking the question. It will be worth it when you get a solid answer!
Do you have any tips to add? If so, please let me know about them in the comments!
Doug Neiner is an Editor at Fuel Your Coding and an official member of the jQuery Team. He is addicted to new technology, and specifically loves spending time with WordPress, Ruby on Rails and jQuery. Learn more via twitter or his Google Profile.
Grab the Feed
Perhaps you can suggest they change the name from jquery.js to jQuery.js.
:)
Its already like that in my fork… ok, not really ;)
Great tips! I’m curious if you also hang out in the JQuery IRC room and if you feel similarly about questions asked there.
I know you meant the “jQuery IRC” room, right? :)
I don’t hang out in the chat room nearly enough to have an opinion about the questions. I think in any venue where you can ask questions there will be people who would rather not do the work themselves, and just get code to copy and paste in response to their question. IRC is slightly more relaxed than a Forum or StackOverflow for instance, but its still important not to waste other people’s time until you have spent some of your own time on the problem.
“Take the time to make sure your question makes sense. Complete sentences, clear code examples, and links to a page demonstrating the problem all go a long way in ensuring a quality answer.”
This is probably the most important bit of advice for asking questions on any forum about any programming topic.
There are several things that turn-me-off a question; no code and no demonstration page are the top two!
Another one is when people post server-side code along with their JS… this is quite regular in the ASP.NET+jQuery tags at SO. “Urm, I’m trying to make my partial .NET view slide across the screen like this cewl JQuEry plugin!??” … it’s just insane.
Those are the best! I love it when the question has ASP.NET + HTML, JS, and CSS all in the same code block with ‘// comments’ to explain the parts. Of course, the parts that are pasted might have nothing to do with the question or the problem! :)
Since you’re using Stack Overflow, the best thing to do would be to add a comment explaining that it’s “jQuery”, and then edit the question to fix it.
Doug has always been extremely helpful with questions I’ve asked him.
The truth of the matter is that a lot of people haven’t quite learned the conventions of coding, and many (I was one of these) will go into the IRC room looking for a quick answer to a slightly complex question.
A lot of people will write these off as “newbies” or “ignorant”, but the truth of the matter is that they are usually asking in order to learn.
For those of us who can help, be careful who you write off.
For those of you who need help, don’t be afraid to ask even a simple question.
$DEITY, yes! (pumping fist in air)
My “favourite” is the H1B Homework Problem, the kind of completely generic “help me” question that you’d think anybody who’d read the first three chapters of a mediocre “Intro to $LANGUAGE” book should be able to deal with as easily as breathing, and they’re asking for someone to do an entire application for them that they obviously only barely understand. Then you look at their email address or whatever and see that they’re actually on some body shop’s payroll.
Now, before you write me off, understand that I’ve run offshore-development groups, in three countries, with people who were (mostly) bright, motivated and working hard to get out from under Rumsfeld’s Rule; my position has always been that there is no such thing as a stupid question IF you don’t already know the answer AND are willing to put effort into learning.
Self-entitlement and obvious laziness are entirely the wrong attitudes to take when you’re asking for help.
I LOVE Stack Overflow. I’m a graphic designer who has had to learn a number of different languages over the years and I love that if I really get stuck, I can just ask for some help and there it is. It’s actually helped me to understand some concepts much better because designers and programmers tend to think differently and I find that many examples on tech-heavy sites fly right over my head.
I have to admit that I’ve always typed JQuery, but will now note it next time I have to ask a question. Thanks for the article.
I love stackoverflow too. I think every programmer has to love it most. I have started to write my own web tech blog with some problems i had been through
Great tips on JQuery
Douglas,
I also have a huge issue with people misspelling jQuery. Why? Because as a programmer I would think that you have to pay attention to details. That’s what syntax forces us to do right? (at least in some cases)
As a former English major it bothers me quite a bit. Thanks for the post!
Couldn’t agree more! Thank you for pointing that out!
I’m Chief Engineer of a new startup here in Singapore. We were recently looking for a new developer for the team (position is no longer open, sorry). When the CEO and I were discussing what to look for, my very first requirement was “Eloquent fluency and literacy in standard English.” We’re using a tool stack and platform that aren’t widely seen as mainstream here, but to me, that wasn’t the primary need.
I don’t care if somebody knows all the intricacies of our toolchain as well as the teams that wrote the tools. I don’t care if she’s written sixteen systems that each model different pieces of what we’re doing. I don’t care if he’s the nicest guy you ever had a beer with. If I can’t communicate effectively and efficiently with a team member, then his or her value to the team effort drops catastrophically.
Realistically, there are only four significant (human) languages in software at the moment: English, Japanese, Russian and Chinese, with most serious developers native to the last three languages scrambling to improve their skills in the first. (Yes, I agree that it’s beyond self-defeating that too many native English speakers are monolingual, but that’s a different rant entirely.) The vast majority of technical documentation that you’re likely to deal with in Southeast Asia or North America is in English (of whatever quality). Therefore, an English-fluent team has a major step up over, say, a Japanese monolingual team.
And in my three-decades-plus in this craft, I have never, ever seen a team deliver a great product without a common language that all were highly proficient in. Very few even-mediocre products were shipped without such a team behind them. Can anybody point to counterexamples among teams that were not so large and dealing with such long timeframes that they could make effective use of translators?
My point is: given all of this, if you are communicating in English (or any other language) to participate in a development team, or in a professional discussion… if you know the language well, and don’t use it well…
In the name of all that you hold holy, why not?
Does it make any difference if you write jquery JQuery or jQuery? Really? Do not get me wrong I realize that the syntax is really important but such details… not to sure..