Programmers often discover solutions while explaining a problem to someone else, even to people with no programming knowledge. Describing the code, and comparing to what it actually does, exposes inconsistencies. Explaining a subject also forces the programmer to look at it from new perspectives and can provide a deeper understanding.
Real thing by the way. Works not only with programming.
came to say this and in addition its more effective with an actual person even if they don’t say anything. Even a small amount of feedback helps that much more although ironically though it kinda palteus if it stops you from jumping on your new ideas and getting them down.
Works with writing fiction, too. I read the section aloud and explain the reasoning behind the choices, and that helps me figure out what isn’t quite working. Also, reading aloud makes awkward dialog stand out more so than reading silently.
I call one of my coworkers once a week with “Can I rubber duck you?” which means I’m just going to talk about my problem and explain my thought process in hopes she spots an obvious solution.
We do it to each other and 30% of the time the other dev says “why not just X” and we agree that it’s pretty obvious.
But isn’t that well known, even from school days? If you’ve ever explained something to someone you’ve recognized that by doing that you’re forced into overthinking the context, diving deeper into the subject.
Sure, teaching is one of the fastest ways to learn.
Also see SoDoTo. See one, Do one, Teach one.
https://www.eclathospitality.com/blog/career-management/use-the-sodoto-method-to-learn-anything
fun fact, I used to do this and had a small mental breakdown because my piece of shit boss refused to listen to my solutions, ultimately causing me more work and stress because the solutions he forced me to implement failed even more spectacularly.
I burned the duck as an effigy of my boss when he was finally fired.
I will never have another duck.
I feel like you burned the messenger, somehow.
all that duck did was enable him. it caused me to accept his behavior and allowed me to ignore the situation because I felt someone listened to me.
I don’t know who initialyse selected the rubber duck as a symbol for that. But it can’t be a coincidence that the method works even better for me while showering.
(Although with that, the energy costs might rival that of AI use)
Now, hear me out: what if the rubber duck burned tons of energy, poisoned the water and air, caused a global shortage of computer parts, was built with material without the permission of creators, made it easy to make nonconsensual sexual images of people, and lied to you?
Obviously then you’d trust everything it says and fire half your staff to replace them with a row of ducks
You forgot:
- exploit and traumatize developing country workers to filter nsfw/nsfl. https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/
- atrophied the skills of people who use it. https://www.anthropic.com/research/AI-assistance-coding-skills
exploit and traumatize developing country workers to filter nsfw/nsfl
I’ve always felt like there’s a place in there for the early internet users through millenials (and maybe some early Gen Z) who spent a lot of time getting tricked by places like 4chan to see nsfl stuff and developed a tolerance to that sort of crap.
I’m sure there are a lot of people that already gave up on humanity years ago and have the psychological damage/callouses to deal with that more than a random selection of a population that hasn’t been affected yet. Let the already damaged use that ability, like a super power, to save those who haven’t experienced enough to the point where they’ve given up yet.
I don’t think they care as much for minimizing trauma as they care for cheap labor from a developing country. I doubt there are a lot of 4chan users there.
Yeah, but it always tells me my ideas are good and he is wrong. So there is that
It’s a moron detector.
Most of us would avoid it like the plague, but morons will let it write their code in the first place.
Amen.
You can fix the world by putting an AI into the rubber duck without electricity and expensive parts and it still works!
AI enhanced by that smile and those eyes and quiet posture helps solve problems :)
works even for non programming stuff. its letting our brain process the information in order ans organising it
I used to tutor college chemistry and calculus. I secretly sucked at both, but I knew what questions to ask students to start them thinking. They got excited to discover the answers while explaining it to me.
Yeah. I’m no programmer but I’ve had it often that I couldn’t find a solution for a problem myself, said ‘fuck it, I’ll have to ask the internet’, and by writing out what my problem was I figured out the solution so I never even posted the half-written posts lol
I write a lot of notes, because I can’t trust myself to remember details of any project after a day or more of hopping through multiple other tasks and online information onslaught. This particularly concerns any problems on which I get stuck — and whaddayaknow, writing out what specifically doesn’t work and how it should work, helps with realizing why it might not work.
This happens so often with my wife that she’s started saying “quack” when I figure it out
It’s all fun and games until the duck talks back.
True for everything I think.
This is why I put rubber ducks at all desks of my it colleagues. It helps.
It might have escalated a bit after that though. There are hundreds of rubber duckies all around the office now…
Oh I know a place that is/was like this but with tiny (or not so tiny) T-Rex figures due to naming things.
I keep one on my desk just for this reference :)
Every single popcorn flick from the 80s and 90s has a main character make a big plot-resolving realization while doing early act 3 exposition
If this is such a universal human experience that we wrote it into movies made for general audiences, I think that programmers are not the only ones debugging to their ducks
I used to teach design. Before a presentation, I always asked my student to explain their project to someone with no knowledge on the subject, like their grandmother or so. Mainly to discover the logic flaws in their presentation.
