Rubber duck debugging
You might remember it as rubber ducking
This spread through many posts rather than one canonical upload.
1999·Early web, before YouTube
Finding a fault in a program by explaining the code, line by line, to a rubber duck.
At a glanceThe facts
- Remembered as
- rubber ducking
- Spread in
- 1999
- Format
- Phenomenon
- Taken from
- The book The Pragmatic Programmer, by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas, which tells of a programmer who carried a duck for the purpose
- Origin
- No single original
- Available
- Not held by ViralWorld
What this wasThe story
A programming practice named in The Pragmatic Programmer: describe the fault aloud, line by line, to a rubber duck. It works, which is why it survived from a book into a genuine internet-wide in-joke with its own merchandise.
LegacyWhat it left behind
- It works because describing what code is meant to do, next to what it does, shows where the two differ.1
Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later
Where it came fromWhat we know
This spread through many posts rather than one identifiable original. No copy is held here — what it was, when it spread and what people called it is what this page can tell you.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first version of this. It spread through many posts rather than from one identifiable original.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
SourcesWhat was read
Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things