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I just read how someone on RetroArch tries to improve documentation by using Copilot. But not in the sense as we might think. His approach is to let Copilot read the documentation and give him follow-up question a hypothetical developer might have. This also could be extended to normal code I guess, to pretend it being a student maybe and have it ask questions instead generating or making changes? I really like this approach.

For context, I myself don't use online Ai tools, only offline "weak" Ai run on my hardware. And I mostly don't use it to generate code, but more like asking questions in the chatbox or revising code parts and then analyze and test the "improved" version. Otherwise I do not use it much in any other form. It's mainly to experiment.

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[-] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 day ago

I'm not really familiar with Rubber ducky and just quickly searched the web. So it is a tool to create tests? Or what is it exactly? Is it an Ai tool? Can it read the entire code or documentation base and then pretend to be a student or developer that asks you questions about it?

I am not down playing the other issues it has, like licensing, cost, environmental impact, dependency and privacy issues. These are still an issue with such an online LLM tool. But that is not the point of my post and does not take away about a "good" use case. In my opinion.

[-] brian@programming.dev 13 points 1 day ago
[-] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 3 points 23 hours ago

Ah I see, thanks for the link. I don't think the case I talked about is the same case as Rubber duck debugging. It's not to read aloud (maybe in front of another programmer or audience). It's more like, if your students or end user read the documentation and still have some questions left at the end. And ask you the questions about stuff they did not understand.

[-] itsathursday@lemmy.world 6 points 23 hours ago

Rubber ducky can be anything you want it to be and has solved more bugs to date than all the LLMs combined. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

[-] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 2 points 23 hours ago

I don't think the case I talked in my post is comparable to Rubber duck debugging.

[-] capuccino@lemmy.world 4 points 23 hours ago

Yes, it does. Maybe you need to experience it first by first hand.

[-] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 3 points 23 hours ago

I read about what Rubber duck debugging is in the linked article. It's a totally different thing that what I'm talking about.

this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2026
28 points (81.8% liked)

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