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Thank you for holding my duck | naml.us

naml.us · 688 words · saved by 1 readers

There’s a story I like to tell, which I vaguely remembered as originating at Bell Labs or Xerox PARC. A researcher had a rubber duck in his office. When he found himself stumped on a problem, he would pick up the duck, walk over to a colleague, and ask them to hold the duck. He would proceed to explain the problem, often realizing the solution himself in the middle of the explanation. Then he would say, “Thank you for holding my duck”, and leave. I love this story. Years ago, Tamar Shinar and I agreed that the “Thank you for holding my duck” expression is better if it is understood to not mean the colleague didn’t contribute, as then it can be used in boundary cases without slight. But finally, someone asked for the source, and I looked for one and failed. I did find something, but it was worse than my version: Wikipedia’s page on Rubber duck debugging has a programmer explaining their problem to the duck. This may work, but misses the social aspect: explaining the problem to a person

Thank you for holding my duck Mon, Mar 8, 2021 research There's a story I like to tell, which I vaguely remembered as originating at Bell Labs or Xerox PARC. A researcher had a rubber duck in his office. When he found himself stumped on a problem, he would pick up the duck, walk over to a colleague, and ask them to hold the duck. He would proceed to explain the problem, often realizing the solution himself in the middle of the explanation. Then he would say, "Thank you for holding my duck", and leave. I love this story. Years ago, Tamar Shinar and I agreed that the "Thank you for holding my du

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