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Search - "rubber duck question"
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Interviewer: (asks technical question)
Me: (answers correctly)
Interviewer: Oh thank God, most of the people we interview fail to answer that. So, on another note do you believe in rubber duck debugging?
Me: yes, ofc
Interviewer: but it's just a toy you know
[I was kinda taken aback]
Me: ...
Me: God is imaginary too you know
Interviewer: (he just laughed)
(So I laughed with him) 😅12 -
Stack Overflow is my rubber duck. I can't tell you the number of times I've figured my problem when I'm typing in my question. Something about trying to find the best way to word the problem helps jumpstart my brain and so I can figure out the solution.3
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Oh boy how do I put it?
So I am an introvert and I have a strange question.
But first some context is needed. I am mostly nice to people not because I like every one but because I think it would only waste my time arguing with them so I just start to ignore the person I don't like. Which puts me in a strange situation where a lot of people think I am their friend where I don't care about them heck I don't know names of some.
Now because I am introvert people/friends see me as someone they could unload their secrets on (knowing I won't tell anyone (because I don't gossip(because it's waste of time) ) ). So I know almost every gossip worthy shit that I don't want to know about or don't care. Sometimes they even ask me for some relationship advice and then it seems like I am like a rubber duck for extroverted people cause at that point they kind of ask questions that clearly they want some specific answer (wich if I don't provide they will say themselves). Also it is also lame to ask me as I have never been in a relationship (I am an Indian and here somehow people seams to get in a relationship just to be in a relationship. (cause it's "modern", "forward thinking" "cool") (which I can already see will not last)). I am not against relationships but I think it's better to appreciate a friendship rather then forcing that "a girl and a boy can't be friends".
Ooh BTW the question to other introverts is if they become rubber ducks to there surrounding people?13 -
Another incident which made a Security Researcher cry
[ NOTE : Check profile to read older incidents ]
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So this all started when I was at my home (bunked the office that day xD) and I got a call from a..... Let's call him Fella as I always do . So here we go . And yeah , our Fella is a SysAdmin .
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Fella - Hey man sup!
Me - Good going mate , bunked the office , weather's nice , gonna spend time with my girl today . So what's goinon?
Fella - Bruh my network sharing folders ain't working no more .
Me - Did you changed or modified anything?
Fella - Nope
Me - Okay , gimme your login creds lemme check .
Fella - Check your inbox *texts me the credentials*
*I logged in and what I'm seeing is that server runs on Windows2008R2 , checked the event logs , everything's fine and all of a sudden what I found is fucking embarrassing , this wise man closed SMB service*
Me - Did you closed SMB service?
Fella - Yeah
Me - You know what it does?
Fella - Yeah it's a protocol , I turned it off to protect the server from Wannacry .
Me - Fuckerrrr!!!!! Asshole dumbass you fuckin piece of Dodo's shit!! SMB is the service responsible for files and network sharing!!!
Fella - But....I just wanted protection
Me - 😭😭😭
*A long conversation continues with a lot of specially made words to decrease the rate of frustration which I used already*
Fella - Okay I'm turning it on .
Me - Go on....... Asshole
Fella - It worked! Thanks a lot bro
Me - Just leave me and my soul away from evil and hang up .
*Now the question is , who the hell gives them the post of SysAdmin? While thinking this question , I almost thought of committing suicide but then my girl came with coffee and my rubber duck*1 -
I always feel like a fool when I accidentally rubber duck someone - at least when I do it on purpose I've warned them first! What often happens though is I ask a question I think I need the answer to and then make the connection while they're trying to help me5
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I don't understand how rubber duck strategy works.
I mean you know it's not listening to you.
I personally prefer making fool of myself and ask a dumb question from a real person which would immediately give me the answer to, than talk to an object, which is basically like talking to my monitor which is the first thing we all do.14 -
Am I in developer hell already? A shitty project is about to come to an end (hopefully), or should I rather say: It needs to come to an end. But I am still quite lost in how to deal with it, hence procrastinating on it - making the deadline come closer and with it the realization that I'll probably have to rewrite almost everything. I'm not sure how, but I do know that the current code is a dumpster fire.
Basically what I need to do is dealing with the APIs of different payment providers/gateways (like PayPal, AmazonPay). For most cases I'll get a payment ID from the shop and need to act on it later, e.g. capture the authorized money in the case of a credit card transaction or do refunds (without user interaction, unless there is an error). Now at first I put something together where I try to abstract the payment information into two tables:
orders{1}<->{0..n}payments
payments{1}<->{1..n}paymentDetails
Unfortunately trying to abstract the different payment methods and to squeeze them (and their different possible stati and functions) in these tables was not very successful, it's a total mess with magic numbers, half-broken behavior and without any consideration for partial payments/captures or unfinished requests (i.e. if there is an exception before the response is dealt with, there is no indication that anything has ever been sent). Also the current amount is calculated through the history of the paymentDetails table, which basically works differently for each payment type.
How to fix this mess in a way that I'll still have a job by next week?
I'm trying to improve the db schema first, as I think my biggest problems are lying there. Through some research I've come across a recommendation for making payment type specific subtables (with a magic number/string in the main table to prevent having to look up all subtables). That way I can record what I send and receive without having to abstract it too much, so I'll have an acceptable transaction log. The paymentDetails table can be removed (necessary fields go to the payments table). The payments table gets multiple fields for the amount (differentiating between open, authorized, captured, processing and refunded values) and always reflects the current status.
Tables:
payments
paymentRequestsPaypal
paymentRequestsAmazonpay
paymentRequestsXyz
I think I'm going in the right direction here. hm. Maybe there's some light at the end of this long, dark tunnel. Or a train. I'll have two days to find out.question kill me already send help thank you for being my rubber duck payment gateways deadline approaching rant/question burnout6 -
Y'all have your rubber duck to debug, but I have my own technic: the SO debugging.
It simply consists as asking your question as you'd normally do, but while doing so, you still think about your issue, and how people not knowing your problem but still knowing about dev would react to your question, making you asking other related question (SO's related question might also help).
IMHO, the most important part is the "related" question, that helps you to think outside the box. It makes your problematic progress a lot, and has the gift of not making you loosing any hope ; and if you ever block for good, your question will look less silly than at the beginning -
Is there a portable DB format like sqlite but stores data like Mongo.
Each record contains key value pairs.
I guess I could install Mongo again... But kinda want to play with the data first. Pulls from a web api
I guess other alternative is to just save the json responses to disk in separate folders and files for now...
And abstract the DB layer behind an interface6 -
I just realized that I have actually mastered the ways of the rubber duck debugger with the help of ... stackoverflow.
I just couldn't get my head around a problem thought about it for hours.
Googled for similar solutions, but didn't find anything.
In the end, I decided I'd do something I usually wouldn't and post a question on stackoverflow.
While carefully writing out and explaining my problem, it just made click.
I had it...
It works now...2