Shoutout to the person who told me to use a rubber duck for debugging

I spent like 2 hours last week staring at my Python code trying to find a bug in a simple loop. My friend in Chicago said to explain each line out loud to a rubber duck on my desk, and I found the mistake in 5 minutes. Has anyone else tried this method with a different object?

3 comments

3 Comments

diana_flores252mo ago

Try explaining your code to a stuffed animal. It forces you to slow down and actually say the logic, which catches dumb mistakes. My cat judges me silently but it works.

the_keith2mo ago

My old roommate's houseplant heard me explain a SQL query for 45 minutes last month. I felt crazy but it fixed a join that was giving me wrong results.

mason_jackson1mo ago

Man, I totally get that. I've explained database problems to my coffee maker before. Just saying it out loud makes you hear the part that doesn't make sense. It's like your brain finally listens when you have to explain it to something that can't talk back. My rubber duck has seen some truly messy code.