How to Get Help

You're going to have a lot of questions as you go through WDI... a lot. This document describes steps you should take when you can't figure something out and you want help. Practice using these steps, because your questions won't stop after WDI. This same process will be essential throughout your web development career!

25 min total -> READ - GOOGLE - ASK

1. Read the Relevant Documentation - 5-10 min

All code bases, frameworks, and languages have some level of official and unofficial documentation. Well-documented tools usually have instructions for every available method as well as a "Getting Started" section to help you set up the tool initially.

You should read a lot of documentation. Advanced developers continually reference the documentation of the tools they use. To find documentation, search for the name of the tool you're using plus "docs" or "documentation." If you have a specific question in mind or are having trouble with a certain method name, include that in your search too. More on googling in the next section!

2. Google Your Question or Topic - 5-10 min

Say you have a question about how to serve an express template from a route and an express controller in node.

Bad Google:     "How do you find a template in express"
             "What do I do to get my templates in express through my routes"

Good Google:   "Express template routing how to"
              "Getting started express routing templates"

Say you are making your first rails app and don't know where to begin

Bad Google:    "new rails"
            "new rails app"
            "How to initiate a new rails app"

Good Google:  "getting started rails tutorial"

3. Ask a human

How to ask?

When asking a question, be sure to include ALL the following elements:

  1. What you want to do
  2. What you did so far
  3. What error you got (or what problem you're seeing)
  4. What you've tried already

Who to ask?

  1. Post a Statckoverflow question (if you don't need the answer right away)
  2. Ask a fellow student or teammate with Slack, email, or in person
  3. Ask a DIR
  4. Ask an instructor