Smart questions are important for software engineers because having a smart question removes any possibility of a question being misunderstood, which translates into time saved. On top of this, a smart question makes it easier for the potential responder to read the question, which increases the chance that an answer will be given. This helps both parties in the end, since the asker will learn something new, and the responder will solidify their knowledge in the subject or recall some knowledge that laid dormant in their vast memory banks. A smart question also helps the community more, as somewhere down the line, another person will get stuck on a similar, if not the same, problem, which now is solved by other helpful members of the community. In addition to that, the question was well laid out enough, so any new visitors to that particular question can be sure if that is the same problem they have.
An example of a smart question would be this post from brad in stackoverflow, where they asked if there was a more efficient way to check if a JavaScript array contained a specific value. The asker provided the only method they knew for checking, showing that they already know a method, but they seek further knowledge on better methods. At the end of their question, they also reference a post that they recognize is similar, but they deemed their problem different enough from the post they had referenced. This shows that they put in the time to see if their exact problem was solved already. There were a plethora of answers that all provided different methods of potentially solving their problem, with the accepted answer providing an answer as well as pointing out frameworks that have pre built methods in them which accomplish what the user wants.
An example of a not smart question would be from a post by Triet Nguyen in stackoverflow, where they ask how to turn a nested list into a dictionary, in Python. The user goes on to state that they want to convert an array of arrays into an object with weird syntax and then ends their post with a question asking for help. The user had failed to provide any steps or approaches that they had attempted, and they failed to show that they searched hard enough for the answer, as the post was closed due to their question already being answered in a different post. In the end, the single response in the post provided a solution that the user was not satisfied with, but it turns out that the specific format the user wanted was not valid Python syntax, which could have been found out by the user themselves if they spent the time to make an object in the format they wanted.
Searching around stackoverflow for “smart” and “not smart” questions has shown me ways to effectively ask questions for problems I had. This does not mean I have perfected the ways of asking smart questions, but I at least have a better idea of how to ask.