AI is a great rubber duck, but it can't replace the struggle of learning
Rubber Duck I've Ever Had
A developer reflects on how AI has evolved from a rubber duck for debugging to a code generator, and warns that juniors who lean on it too early skip the struggle that builds real understanding. Seniors can spot when the AI drifts, but juniors get working code without knowing why it works. The piece also covers procrastination, entropy, system design, and practical habits like small increments, tests, and simplification.
Struggling with the problem first is how you learn; skipping the struggle skips the learning, even if the code that comes out works fine.
- rossdavidh
Decent advice, but I noted that every single thing he suggested (i.e. "make sure you..." or "look out for...") is going to be very difficult, well nigh impossible for any medium to large coding organization to do. I wonder if LLMs will end up empowering individual programmers, but cursing large dev teams to more rapid decay.
- bradknowles
The title is actually “The Best Rubber Duck I've Ever Had”.
- cowlevel
HN's title auto censorship can be funny sometimes