Every programmer knows the hardships of growing as software engineer. The pain of seeing an error being thrown, or worse, no error at all and yet the program crashes. Once the error is identified then comes the meticulous debugging. We are all taught in every class to minimize this problem through proper commenting, following conventional style guides, and unit testing. But we all at one-point turn to the google gods to save us from an evil bug that can’t be squished. Most times we find what we are searching for, but there comes a time when a young developer must post to a forum or email a senior developer.
How one goes about communicating their troubles to another can greatly affect the quality and rate of response. This is especially so in the agile world where every morning during a stand up you need to explain what you have been doing the previous work day and if there is anything blocking you from progressing towards your goal. To seem competent, before you ask a question try to do some self-research and self-problem solving. This is important to communicate that an effort was made and that you are not wasting someone else’s precious time.
Here is an example of a novice trying his/her best to troubleshoot an error code.
I am trying to get my first taste of Android development using Eclipse. I ran into this problem when trying to run Eclipse, having installed version 4.2 only minutes ago.
After first trying to start Eclipse without any parameters to specify the Java VM, I got an error message saying it couldn't find a Java VM called javaw.exe inside the Eclipse folder, so I found where Java was installed and specified that location as the parameter in the shortcut's target. Now I get a different error, "Java was started but returned exit code=13".
Similar questions seem to indicate that it's a 32-bit/64-bit conflict, but I'm 99% positive that I downloaded 64-bit versions of both Eclipse and Java (RE 7u5), which I chose because I have 64-bit Windows 7.
• If anyone knows how to confirm that my Eclipse and Java are 64-bit, that'd be appreciated.
• If you think my problem is a different one, please help!
Notice that the post describes how the user has already tried several different approaches. It even indicates that a bit of hunting on a forum has taken place and what the resulting researched solution is. That notion of preparedness gives the question receiver a sense of courtesy.
Honestly most times if a question is simple or difficult, especially in companies, the senior developers are more than happy to share their knowledge in the benefit that they will flower more experts. One thing to keep in mind is the frequency that the questions are asked should decrease relative to time. Eventually the novice developers will need to step up and pass their knowledge on to the new employees.