Foundations: programming and problem solving · Novice · Lesson 15 of 98 · about 3 hours
Reading documentation, searching errors and asking good questions
After this you can find answers in official documentation, read an error message properly, and write a question that someone can actually answer.
Why it matters
Every engineer is stuck for part of every day. What distinguishes good ones is how quickly they get unstuck: reading the whole error message and the stack trace, searching for the exact error text, checking the official docs before blog posts, and when asking for help, saying what they tried and what they expected. Practise this deliberately: when you hit an error, write down what you think it means before searching. When you ask an AI assistant or a person, include the code, the full error and what you already tried. Trap: pasting errors into an AI tool and accepting whatever comes back without understanding it. You will need to explain your code in interviews and on the job.
How to use this resource
Short, concrete and kind. The habits in it apply whether you are asking a colleague, a forum or an AI assistant.