How to feed a blind duck (or: why Google doesn’t have the answer)

How to feed a blind duck or why google isn't always the right answer. Photo of the white duck discussed in the post.

Excogitate: to study intently and carefully in order to grasp or comprehend fully.

Last year I managed to include zombies and cows in my weekly post. Today it's ducks!

There really is a blind duck

If you've attended a course at our Centurion venue, you may remember the ducks on the koi pond. Daisy, the white duck, is getting old and has lost most of her vision. This is a photo of her in her younger days.

Our ducks are not pets and they are not really tame. This has made feeding Daisy a challenge. She is used to our calls when it is feeding time, but she can't see the duck pellets. So she pecks frantically in various directions when she hears us.

Add a pair of wild and aggressive Egyptian geese to the mix, and the problem gets worse. The geese chase the ducks, and Daisy wanders away to other areas of the property to avoid them.

What does Google say?

Of course, I googled the problem. But my search for "how to feed a blind duck" was not helpful. There were a few videos, but they didn't apply to our circumstances. And there was information about building a duck blind. And links to the Blind Duck Pub in Toronto.

This is the reality of Google searches. Often you find exactly what you need. But almost as often you find two results with opposing views, or information that isn't relevant.

A story about a course

The practical exercises that we include on our courses are important. They reinforce new knowledge by making you apply what you have just learned. It also helps us, as lecturers, identify topics that need to be re-explained. Because often something makes sense when you hear it, but not when you have to do it. (FYI: that's part of the learning process.)

Some years ago I was presenting the Introduction to Programming course. When it was time for the practical exercises, one delegate wanted to go home instead. He admitted that he would look for the answer on Google. Needless to say, he learned much less on the course than he could have.

We've seen it too often on courses. People will rather search Google than actually think about how to solve the problem.

There's no shortcut to skills

There are different reasons for this. Here are two possibilities:

  • Our fear of failure or looking stupid. We'd rather pretend to be able to do something, than get help so that we can actually do it.
  • Our desire for the quick win and the easy solution. It's much easier to copy and paste, than to type and understand.

And developers often do the same thing at work. Not sure how to code the solution? Check Stackoverflow. Copy and paste and hope it works. And then spend more time trying to make this work than writing it from scratch. And don't waste time trying to understand the code you pasted, as long as it (sort of) works.

I know you have deadlines. But this approach is a recipe for disaster. If we want to develop real skills, we have to do the work of learning and understanding and trying. We need to excogitate.

A final word about ducks

How does this relate to Daisy? Google didn't have the answer. I had to think about it myself. I had to try out my ideas until I found a solution that works.

Speaking of ducks: there are alternatives to Google. Like Bing (who uses that?) or DuckDuckGo. DuckDuckGo is a great option if you worry about all the data Google collects. If more people use it, will it become a verb? Will I be able to say that I duckducked for the answer?

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