Ask For Help or Don't Ask For Help
When you come up against a problem to solve and you don't know how to solve it immediately, you have two choices:
1. Ask for help.
2. Don't ask for help.
Technically, these two options complement each other, so as long as you have the asking ability, you always have that choice. Whether you know how to solve your problem immediately or not. Or whether you'll be able to solve it eventually or not. Or whether you have a problem or not. But lets not dwell on technicalities.
Benefits of asking for help:
1. It can be the most efficient way from where you're at to where you want to be. An expert can give you the answer, you can implement it, and you'll be all set.
2. It can be less confusing. If you have to sift through a lot of documentation or search engine results, you can get a lot of unnecessary information that can cloud your reasoning and planning. When you ask an expert, they can see what you're dealing with and tell you only the information that's relevant.
3. It's safer. If you're dealing with a crucial part of your project, a person more knowledgeable than you is good to get input from, because they will be more aware of the potential mistakes and pitfalls of what you're working with. It will help to ensure you don't wreck the program.
4. It can save the expert time. If you break something, it may take more of the expert's time to fix it than it would have been for you to ask them for help in the first place.
Benefits of figuring it out on your own:
1. It can also be the most efficient way to get to where you want to be. There is some overhead in getting help: You need to contact the expert and potentially arrange a meeting. You need to explain the problem. And of course you're pulling them away from whatever work they would otherwise be doing. If it's simple, it could use up fewer resources than asking for help.
2. When you go through the work of figuring something out yourself, it sticks in your mind better. You have to get familiar with the underlying concepts and make your own connections, so you have a fuller idea of how the system works. And the more connections you have, the easier it is to remember.
3. You get practice at figuring things out on your own. The more you figure things out now, the better you will be at figuring things out later. You will become more adept at making the right searches, ignoring irrelevant information, and making the right connections.
4. You'll learn additional things in the process. As mentioned before, you're not likely to find only the information you're interested in. You'll find information related to it that may be useful to you in the future. You'll be more knowledgeable which will make you a better developer.
I think in general, if you have the time, it's good to figure things out on your own. If it's a crucial part of the project that you're working on, you can ask the expert if to review it afterward. You get the benefits of learning more and becoming a better developer. And you don't use up so much of the expert's time. And while the additional information may be confusing at first, if you take the time to process it well, it should all make sense in the end.
If it's crunch time though, you're going to want to ask for help. If you need to get this project done right away, you'll want all of the help that you can get. The learning isn't as important as the execution at the moment.
1. Ask for help.
2. Don't ask for help.
Technically, these two options complement each other, so as long as you have the asking ability, you always have that choice. Whether you know how to solve your problem immediately or not. Or whether you'll be able to solve it eventually or not. Or whether you have a problem or not. But lets not dwell on technicalities.
Benefits of asking for help:
1. It can be the most efficient way from where you're at to where you want to be. An expert can give you the answer, you can implement it, and you'll be all set.
2. It can be less confusing. If you have to sift through a lot of documentation or search engine results, you can get a lot of unnecessary information that can cloud your reasoning and planning. When you ask an expert, they can see what you're dealing with and tell you only the information that's relevant.
3. It's safer. If you're dealing with a crucial part of your project, a person more knowledgeable than you is good to get input from, because they will be more aware of the potential mistakes and pitfalls of what you're working with. It will help to ensure you don't wreck the program.
4. It can save the expert time. If you break something, it may take more of the expert's time to fix it than it would have been for you to ask them for help in the first place.
Benefits of figuring it out on your own:
1. It can also be the most efficient way to get to where you want to be. There is some overhead in getting help: You need to contact the expert and potentially arrange a meeting. You need to explain the problem. And of course you're pulling them away from whatever work they would otherwise be doing. If it's simple, it could use up fewer resources than asking for help.
2. When you go through the work of figuring something out yourself, it sticks in your mind better. You have to get familiar with the underlying concepts and make your own connections, so you have a fuller idea of how the system works. And the more connections you have, the easier it is to remember.
3. You get practice at figuring things out on your own. The more you figure things out now, the better you will be at figuring things out later. You will become more adept at making the right searches, ignoring irrelevant information, and making the right connections.
4. You'll learn additional things in the process. As mentioned before, you're not likely to find only the information you're interested in. You'll find information related to it that may be useful to you in the future. You'll be more knowledgeable which will make you a better developer.
I think in general, if you have the time, it's good to figure things out on your own. If it's a crucial part of the project that you're working on, you can ask the expert if to review it afterward. You get the benefits of learning more and becoming a better developer. And you don't use up so much of the expert's time. And while the additional information may be confusing at first, if you take the time to process it well, it should all make sense in the end.
If it's crunch time though, you're going to want to ask for help. If you need to get this project done right away, you'll want all of the help that you can get. The learning isn't as important as the execution at the moment.
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