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Search - "rubber ducking"
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Ok, rubber ducks are ducking helpful, but I moved to use actual ducks.
If you are currently stuck somewhere where your rubber-mate cannot help out, feel free to ask. I’ll forward.14 -
I try to explain my problems to my 6yo twins. It is just HILARIOUS to see their small faces going "huh. Did you tried using that spark thing to send your emails for you?".
Srsly, they give better advice than half the devs I work with. Rubber ducking be damned.6 -
My form of rubber ducking is starting to post a question on StackOverflow and realizing in the middle of typing the reason for the bug I've struggled with all day.2
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@trogus it would be pretty rad to have an avatar option that would add a devRant sticker to a laptop.
btw: I love the Rubik's cube chillin with the rubber ducking debugger.3 -
We have a long standing, transient, occasional error in our system that we haven't quite been able to (or have had the time to) pin down.
I was thinking out loud with our project lead what the cause could be, which - before I realized it - segwayed seamlessy into me being tasked with hotfixing it in order to unblock some other tasks that people expect to start working on tomorrow.
I think I'm starting to see why people use inanimate objects for rubber ducking instead of other devs. Here's hoping my theory checks out.2 -
If you're stuck with something and just cannot figure out where the issue is in your code, there is nothing that helps you more than talking the problem out with someone.
Most of the time you'll end up figuring out the solution yourself while describing the problem to him/her. =)2 -
I always feel like a fool when I accidentally rubber duck someone - at least when I do it on purpose I've warned them first! What often happens though is I ask a question I think I need the answer to and then make the connection while they're trying to help me5
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While it's totally not without its valid use cases, I fucking hate pair programming.
Well, let me elaborate. I hate *remote* pair programming. It completely disrupts my flow and wastes so much time with additional water cooler nonsense, and pedantic argument for the sake of participation. Not to mention "oh hey let me see how you did this... Oh, you know what, I think it would be better to do it this way...". Ok, great, we weren't even discussing that, but sure, let's completely detail this session to refactor something that could have come up at a good transition point, like I dunno, say a code review?
Like I said, there are very good reasons to pair program, but I would much prefer rubber ducking wherever possible.2 -
Been struggling with an issue all weekend (it had to go to client today) with no solution and without understanding why it was returning the wrong values.
Arrive this morning to the office and team leader asks me about the issue and gives me a new one with higher priority, so I decide to pass my issue to a junior I work with.
While doing so and explaining everything he should look into, by some magic powers I found the reason for the issue
Thank the rubber ducking god!!! -
That rabbit in my grandpa's left table drawer, in the home I grew at. I wanted to finally catch it, and kill it. I was bad with animals all along, especially this one. My grandpa died the year before I was born, and my grandma said we would've got along really well. So much to talk about, a scientist to an engineer. So, I travelled back, but my home somehow turned from a city stone-walled house into a half-soaked, decaying wooden one. I caught that rabbit though, but while I was holding it at its neck and twisting it, it somehow disappeared, distributed evenly as if I were twisting a crayon. I was trying to find it, but in that left drawer, among century-old pencils and that red liquid thermometer I played with as a kid, only a faded out, dusty duckling resided. I picked it up, and unlike the rabbit, it was paper, no, cigarette paper thin. It wasn't hostile. It wasn't trying to run away. It just turned from yellow to grey, feathers leaving my fingers covered in fine dust. I realized it will never die, dwelling and decaying there forever, happy.
I did my calculations, and I knew for a fact when and where the rabbit should've appeared. It was the middle drawer, not the left one. I opened it and looked in anticipation how something chewed through the bottom. I caught it, but it was no rabbit, it was an alive, rubber rat. The rubber was white turned grey, old, aged, dusty, probably Soviet. I poked the rat's eye with a pen rod, but the rat's body inflated a bit, leaving it invincible. It was mocking me.
Of the same white rubber, a ball appeared. I knew for a fact it was alive too, I felt the bones inside holding it. I found its lips, and was prying it open. The massive, dry mouth emerged, with a full set of human teeth, albeit wider and nastier ones. Huge eyes looked at me. It was alive, it was intelligent. It was my grandpa's personal financial assistant all along. It told me to leave the rat and the rabbit alone. He told me not to worry about the ducking, as it was in safe hands.
It made friends with my brother during the "blue age", when he was wearing thin, worn out rugs instead of clothes, tiny faded blue flowers on them, screaming and annoying my grandma he lived with in that room, not a single person other than the two in sight. The house was slowly submerging. The water was rising.2