Where can I find an answer to a coding problem?

I'm spending more and more time in junior developer groups to lend a hand on technical issues, or questions related to a developer's day-to-day life.

But I regularly notice that some beginners ask questions in the group without even taking the time to do a search on the internet beforehand, and it's quite tiresome.

So rather than sending an "RTFM" (Read the fucking manual) or an "LMGTFY" (Let me Google that for you) link, I thought it would be more constructive to write an article about my method for researching solutions, so here it is.

The following list is numbered for a reason, ideally you should use these research sources roughly in the same order, like a funnel to target your search.

1 - The documentation

Generally, the people best placed to talk about how a technology works, whether it's a library, a framework or any system, remain the people who took part in its creation, and therefore in its documentation.

We often think of the documentation when learning a technology, or when building a project, but not when debugging, even though it very often holds information about things that are possible or impossible to do with the tool in question.

For example in the VueJS documentation, you'll find plenty of little boxes with exclamation marks that can help you out every time.

2 - Github (or another Git repository)

If we think of documentation as a source of information, we don't necessarily think of the Git repository itself, because the readme files present often directly reflect the documentation.

But there's one extremely useful thing that isn't found in the docs, and that's "issues." Issues on Github contain the list of all the questions asked and all the problems encountered by users of the technology, as well as the answers from developers or experienced users—it's a real goldmine.

Sometimes you might also come across a bug that hasn't yet been fixed by the team, which can determine whether or not you use a particular technology.

Little tip: On Github, when you search for an issue, by default it will search among those already resolved, personally I disable this filter because sometimes an unresolved issue containing the right keywords will redirect you to a resolved issue that you wouldn't have found with your search!

3 - Stack Overflow

I won't bother introducing you to Stack Overflow, it's without a doubt THE reference when it comes to solutions for programming problems.

The advantage of the platform is that the community makes sure the answers are properly formatted and that they include a link to the documentation whenever possible.

4 - Blogs

Blog posts are a good source of information because they often cover the topic as a whole, and even if the solution may take longer to find on the page, it will often be well documented.

And since you're currently reading this article, I have no doubt that you're used to reading a few articles!

5 - Help groups and forums

There we go, we've reached it. You've gone through all the options above, you've been searching for a long time but still haven't found a solution?

Then maybe it's time to ask the question on a specialized forum, in a help group, or even, in your turn, on Stack Overflow!

Remember to prepare your question carefully, add a bit of code for context, be polite and understandable, and everything should go well.

6 - Asking a peer

Sometimes I also fail to find a solution, even after asking the question on a forum (either due to a lack of answers, or because the proposed solutions don't fit).

To avoid staying stuck for too long, I then sometimes ask an expert among my circle to take a bit of time with me to go through my code and help me find the solution to the problem.

And of course, when it's someone else from my circle who needs my insight on another technology, I'm happy to give a bit of my time (whenever possible) to help out!