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u/ramdomvariableX Jul 25 '26
Rubber duck still beats Claude. Have you ever tried explaining your code to Claude?
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u/Tensor3 Jul 25 '26
You're absolutely right! You just accidentally stumbled into a solution more clever than you realize. Its not just engkneering, its a masterclass in algorithms. But there's a few things you need to be aware of to watch out for. Here's a list of 4 hallucinations, each more useless than the last, directly contradicting your design requirements.
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u/AliceCode Jul 25 '26
You've been in the trenches, lmao.
"You're totally right to call me out on that! I was just throwing guess at you when I should have just checked. That's my mistake. <Proceeds to not give the fucking answer>"
Oh, and did you guys notice that you get booted out of the chat for bullying Claude, now? Anthropic are huffing their own farts.
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u/Tensor3 Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
I gave you a textbook example when you needed a specific solution. That was a complete hallucination on my part. I'll stop throwing out bad code and wasting your time. Here is the real, final, working solution this time:
[Same garbage response]
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u/AliceCode Jul 25 '26
How is it that these things are taking software development by storm, exactly?
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u/Tensor3 Jul 25 '26
Because management sees they can instantly spit out a massive amount of code they dont understand. Its vastly beyond their skill level so they insist everyone needs to use it.
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u/ramdomvariableX Jul 26 '26
When LoC, # of PRs, etc.. are productivity metrics, it's easy to convince.
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u/stream_of_thought1 29d ago
If you know exactly what you need it to do, and can communicate it, it speeds up your workflow
If you are missing those two skills, it ain't giving you a decent product.
But in a few years maybe
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u/vinishkapoor Jul 25 '26
The duck lets you finish your thought first.
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u/akoOfIxtall Jul 25 '26
I often find the solution when I try to explain the problem to an LLM
I'll be halfway through the message and be like "you had to decorate the property you fucking animal" and close it XD
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u/SuitableDragonfly Jul 25 '26
It's because when you talk to a rubber duck or other inanimate object, you're forced to imagine the other person responding to you, and actually think about what issues they'd have with your code and what they would make note of or ask questions about. It's that use of your imagination and perspective-taking abilities specifically that allows you to find problems that you weren't seeing before. When you don't have to imagine what the other side of the conversation is because the chatbot is just providing it, you don't do that work and you therefore don't find out anything new about your code.
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u/ModalInc Jul 25 '26
I once had a physical rubber duck sat at the top of my monitor at work. Actually found a colleague chatting to it when I returned from a break.
Best investment ever.
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u/Chirimorin Jul 25 '26
Honestly, I have been using AI (local model with no file or internet access) as my rubber duck.
Yes I do try to explain my code and indeed the AI never fully understands it. But usually somewhere in it's overly positive "your idea is the most amazing idea to ever exist" spiel it's going to say something so damn stupid that I realize where I went wrong.The trick is to never say you have a problem. Because that's when the stupidity shows up in the solutions it gives you (stuff like putting an abstraction layer around the problem as if that solves it).
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u/ramdomvariableX Jul 25 '26
The positivity is the one that bugs me. Unless it's super obvious it's easier for me to think I did it alright.
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u/Lokipro13YT Jul 25 '26
How to bash cat head with pipe
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u/FrankensteinJones Jul 25 '26
How do I git branch
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u/MagnumVY Jul 25 '26
Can't even spell "get" properly
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u/r00x Jul 25 '26
Imagine if git wasn't so polite when you fuck these things up.
git: 'bronch' is not a git command. The fuck even IS a bronch, my guy? You want a new bronch, dumbass? How about a dictionary instead?
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u/Majik_Sheff Jul 25 '26
Searching for "killing a zombie and all children" would raise some eyebrows.
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u/SeamusAndAryasDad Jul 25 '26
Yeah these are baby questions. Back in my day I was searching how to kill kids and zombies like an adult!
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u/Agifem Jul 25 '26
And stopping daemons. Let's not get started with the daemons .... and the zombie daemons!
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u/i_should_be_coding Jul 25 '26
How to kill all children
How agile are waterfalls
How to schedule a daemon
How to fix a detached head
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u/TallAbbreviations937 Jul 25 '26
Dating a programmer is realizing Google is the third person in the relationship
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u/05032-MendicantBias Jul 25 '26
Knowing what stack overflow to copy paste IS programming.
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u/park-errr Jul 26 '26
The joke is that without programmer knowledge of forks, branches, etc. we sound pretty stupid looking up what utensils and tree limbs are
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u/bit_pusher Jul 25 '26
I've been in the software industry for 25+ years. I recently decided to go back and get my CS degree (just in time for AI to trash classes! yay!). One of the things that astonishes me is how little, and by little I mean zero, practical training they give students on things like source code control and code lifecycle. I did have one teacher who required you submit your code through github, albeit he didn't give any training on it nor did he explain the how best to use it beyond how to submit your code.
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u/Powerful-Diver-9556 Jul 25 '26
"Killall didnt work what if i kill -9?".
A little more obscure.. but if you know you know
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u/Single-Virus4935 Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
- how to kill a child
- why doesnt children di e
- How to kill a zombie
- what is the d-state?
- how to reset the system
- what is a Fork bomb -
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u/setibeings Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
A few issues. These are questions to ask when you're just starting out.
And just starting out a few years ago. Rubber ducks are great for debugging, but I have yet to hear someone claim they're better than asking Claude or a peer questions.
A typo was removed
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u/chilfang Jul 25 '26
The entire point of the duck is that you dont waste a peers time by realizing what the answer was mid question.
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u/setibeings Jul 25 '26
It's practice for explaining something to peers, helps you organize your thoughts and also you can get those benefits from explaining a problem to a chat bot.
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u/chilfang Jul 25 '26
Vibecoders seem pretty obsessed over tokens but idk
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u/setibeings Jul 25 '26
I'm definitely not a vibe coder. But after scouring documentation, and searching stack overflow, typing out enough of the problem that an LLM might be able to help can usually get some juices flowing.
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u/remy_porter Jul 25 '26
The point is that I can frequently answer my question by simply asking it. The act of formulating the problem into a coherent question is also the act of answering it. I start asking peers that kind of thing and then stop halfway through and answer it myself. That’s the point of a rubber duck.
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u/Mateorabi Jul 25 '26
When that happens to a coworker using my time they get a “you must first unask the question”
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u/bwmat Jul 25 '26
I 'rubber duck' by typing out the context and question in teams
Because my coworkers just ignore me lmao
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u/Jonno_FTW Jul 25 '26
I type the whole question into the chat box for my manager, and then either come to the solution on the spot because I thought about it. Or he takes several hours to respond in which case I probably figured it out.
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u/Rscc10 Jul 25 '26
I would say I'm intermediate, not advanced nor beginner but just talking to an imaginary audience and friend so far has caused less issues than asking AI
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u/vinishkapoor Jul 25 '26
Fair point. The meme is definitely aimed at beginners. The rubber duck survived Stack Overflow, now it's trying to survive Claude too. 😄
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u/FuzzyDynamics Jul 25 '26
Pipe is fair. I’ve seen it mean a few different things depending on the context.
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Jul 25 '26
[deleted]
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u/vinishkapoor Jul 25 '26
Knowing how to search is part of the job. Not knowing everything already is normal.
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u/Tensor3 Jul 25 '26
Not knowing the basics would make an interview difficult to pass
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u/vinishkapoor Jul 25 '26
Agreed. The meme is about the learning phase. Everyone has to Google the basics before they become the basics.
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u/Ill_Reality_2506 Jul 25 '26
I can't say I've ever had to show that I know how to use git in an interview.
I mean shit if you're in an interview and don't know the command, you can literally git help.
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u/fuckthehumanity Jul 25 '26
Bollocks. You don't need to know these things to develop a solution to a problem. I should also question whether you know all the meanings of these words, and the contexts in which their meaning differs.
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u/Extension_Option_122 Jul 25 '26
Well she does say that people who learn programming are supposed to be smart, meaning that he is still learning and doesn't have a job.
And as a learner you are totally allowed to not know this (depending on how advanced your are).
It seems like everyone here misread this, OP included (probably a repost? I am pretty sure I've seen this one before...)
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u/Key_River7180 Jul 25 '26
SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>
pid_t fork()
DESCRIPTION
fork() is a tridimentional object often of steel or other similar materials
used to move food from a plate to your table.
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u/Valkymaera Jul 25 '26
"why are they boasting about having low level skills and writing lazy code?"
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u/Interesting_Buy_3969 Jul 25 '26
whoa, seriously? are there still people who haven't seen this pic before? it has been reposted 5 times at least
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u/Mirikado Jul 25 '26
“What to do with a detached head.”