Rubber Duck Debugging

http://lists.ethernal.org/oldarchives/cantlug-0211/msg00174.html

by teej • 17 years ago

26 8 17 years ago

lists.ethernal.org

cdeutmey• 17 years ago

Funny, I'm quite often the 'rubber duck' for other members of my team. I was thinking of trying to find a way to get a cardboard cutout of myself that they could pull out when needed.

ConradHex• 17 years ago

I love being this guy. Great way to learn how different systems work, and it's fun trying to find bugs or holes in other people's code. (Politely!)

MaysonL• 17 years ago

A friend of mine found he could diagnose most problems by explaining the code to me, whether or not I was there.

mcxx• 17 years ago

I heard a similar story. Back in the day, when computers were big and slow, there was a debugging room in the Bell Labs. When a programmer had difficulties debugging his piece of code, he went to that room and talk to a teddy bear about his code and the error he's getting. This should have made him realize what he's doing wrong. I don't know how successful the method was for them, however it works often for me.

dcminter• 17 years ago

"One university computer center kept a teddy bear near the help desk. Students with mysterious bugs were required to explain them to the bear before they could speak to a human counsellor." - The Practice of Programming, Kernighan and Pike 1999.

It's a good book and a good technique. We used to use the director for the same purpose at my first "real" job. He couldn't program but he was really good at looking skeptical.

jonke• 17 years ago

This has a own section in the book The Pragmatic Programmer. Chapter 3, Debugging, Rubber Ducking.

However, even if I agree with the great use I really use it more for code reviews than for actual hardcore debugging. (This could be my fault because I use distributed async processes in my work)

I think the rubber ducking has more advantage if you use a high level dynamic type language to code in (rather than more low-level C with pointers).

timcederman• 17 years ago

This is a great method. I always start writing an email to another developer when I'm having a problem, and by the time I finish it I've usually solved my issue.

jamesbritt• 17 years ago

I've found that enlightenment comes right after clicking "Send".

Rubber Duck Debugging

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