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75% of what AI does can be achieved with a magic 8 ball, rubber duck, Wikipedia, and a good notes app
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this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2026
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The duck can be anything really, it's the explaining out loud your issue that helps find what you're missing. It's a popular programming technique
Yeah Rubber Ducking, OKA Rubber Duck Debugging. You are working on a program, say a store front end, and you are having issues and you don't know why. You get someone else, they don't even have to be a programmer but it helps, and then you explain briefly and clearly, step by step what you are trying to do, and most of the time the issue will become clear and if not the other person can point out something you are missing because you are too close to the code and you also know what you want to put into it, but that doesn't mean you put it in, and you just think you did.
The name comes from a guy who used to carry around a large rubber duck for when he couldn't get people to explain it to, and he would explain it to the duck. Allot of programmers use dolls and teddy bears instead of ducks. Back when I was programming I did it to the game box of H2G2TG. I didn't learn what it was called until 6 years later from a fellow programmer in collage (IIRC) but it was the same thing.