Lately, I’ve been very active on the ZeroToMastery Discord channel.
The channel is one of the meeting places for the popular coding courses.
Many people are beginners.
But that’s what the community is for: to provide a place to ask for help and to connect to other students and the teachers.
When it comes to asking for help with coding challenges, many people are either unable to properly debug and pin-point a problem, or they are unable to communicate their problem.
Here are some steps to increase the chances of getting help with coding tasks:
Find and read the error message. When something crashes, there will be an error output somewhere. Sometimes the errors are cryptic, but they provide a first starting point.
Try to reproduce the error. Did it work before the latest change? Drill down until you find out what line of code produces the error (if possible).
Copy/paste search terms into your search engine:
<error message>+<framework of choice>etc. Use StackOverflow, GitHub isssues, forums, etc.If you still can’t solve your problem, go ask for help. Read the rules for the portal where you’re asking for help. For example, Discord channels often have “pinned messages” or a dedicated channel for #rules.
Use this template or something similar:
My problem is: …
I’ve tried …, but that didn’t work.
Here is my code (minimal code example, GitHub repo, etc.)
Try to be as specific as possible.
Other people are not as familiar as you with your code base, with the specific problem, with your development environment, and so forth.
Be polite.
Be patient. It doesn’t help to spam your question in several channels and nagging others, if they haven’t answered shortly after you’ve posted.
Others are volunteering their time and effort to help you. Be mindful of their time and effort by making it as easy as possible to help you.