How to ask for help as a junior developer: three questions first

Newcomers often fall into one of two extremes: asking the moment they hit an error, or staying silent and stuck for a whole day. Both waste the team's time.

1. What am I expecting?

Describe clearly the result you expected and the result you actually got. A lot of bugs reveal themselves when you write those two sentences side by side.

2. What have I tried?

• Read the whole error message, not just the first line.
• Search the issue tracker and the internal docs.
• Shrink the problem down to the shortest example that reproduces it.

3. What kind of help do I need?

Do you need a hint about which direction to take, a review, or a decision? Saying so lets the person you ask answer in one message instead of ten.

Expected: the /posts page builds successfully.
Actual: "params is a Promise" error during the build.
Tried: read the Next 16 docs, added await, but it still fails in generateMetadata.
Need: a hint about what I'm missing.

A good question already holds half of its answer.