Julia Evans has a great guide to asking good questions, you should read it :) Asking good questions is such a useful skill, I wish programming education spent more time on it.

Getting really good at asking questions is also a great hack for looking like a better developer (it’ll also help you actually become better, but in the short term it’s a good hack). When you ask a bad question, like “My code isn’t working, can you help me?” people have to wonder what you’ve tried already or if you tried at all before giving up and asking someone else. If you ask the exact same question with more detail, especially about what you tried already, like “I’m trying to send an email but I’m getting an error message I don’t understand. I tried googling it but I got a bunch of different answers and I don’t know which one applies to my problem. Can you help me sort through them?” then it’s obvious that not only did you not immediately give up, but you also respect your answerer’s time enough to make it as easy as possible for them to help you. Telling them what you’ve tried already means they can skip suggesting things you already did, and asking a specific question means they don’t have to do the work of figuring out what the question actually is before they can even start thinking about how to answer it.

People love it when you make things easier for them, and when you show them you’ve put some effort into doing so, they’ll think you’re a better programmer than the person who makes getting the real question out of them like pulling teeth even if both of you are around the same skill level. That’s the hack part :) The becoming a better programmer part is that stating a question really clearly (yay rubber ducks!) and listing everything you’ve tried already may trigger that flash of insight about what you haven’t tried but should or what assumption you made that could be wrong. If you get into the habit of reflecting on what you’re doing, you’ll learn a lot faster than someome who sits around and waits for help.