blog.larah.me

Never say "it didn't work"

May 13, 2025

When asking for help, my simple rule is:

Avoid the phrase “it didn’t work”.

Be explicit. Tell us specifically what the “it” is.

Even if it’s obvious to you, the reader might not have your same context. Err on the side of overcommunication and lay it out for me, so I can help you quicker.

Examples

Bad: I tried running tests but it didn’t work
Good: I merged the branch, but CI was never triggered and the tests never ran in Jenkins

Bad: Login doesn’t work
Good: After entering valid credentials on the login page, I’m redirected to /login again instead of /dashboard, and there’s no error message shown.

Bad: The page is broken
Good: When I navigate to /dashboard, the page loads indefinitely and the console shows a 500 Internal Server Error from the getUserData API call.

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