For some time now I have been trying to come up with a good idea on what topic I would like to write to everyone so as to develop more regularity despite the many duties I have to perform. So the idea was born for what I love, which is programming, I remember how many people liked it when I published information on creating a bot for Cartel, so I would like to create a small programming corner and publish programming trivia and mini tutorials.

Rubber ducky method

Today I would like to touch on a topic that is quite interesting, and probably unknown to many people. We're going to talk about the rubber ducky method, which is the programmer's biggest helper. Let's perhaps start by citing what this method is all about:

"In software engineering, rubber duck debugging (or rubberducking) is a method of debugging code by articulating a problem in spoken or written natural language. The name is a reference to a story in the book The Pragmatic Programmer in which a programmer would carry around a rubber duck and debug their code by forcing themselves to explain it, line-by-line, to the duck. Many other terms exist for this technique, often involving different (usually) inanimate objects, or pets such as a dog or a cat.

Many programmers have had the experience of explaining a problem to someone else, possibly even to someone who knows nothing about programming and then hitting upon the solution in the process of explaining the problem. In describing what the code is supposed to do and observing what it actually does, any incongruity between these two becomes apparent. More generally, teaching a subject forces its evaluation from different perspectives and can provide a deeper understanding. By using an inanimate object, the programmer can try to accomplish this without having to interrupt anyone else. This approach has been taught in computer science and software engineering courses." - check for more info

As you can see, it's quite funny, because the programmer actually, instead of talking to another programmer about his code so as not to take up his time, simply turns to a rubber duck and explains everything to it step by step. Of course, it doesn't have to be a 1:1 duck, but any object or animal, or even another human who doesn't understand anything. Surprisingly, this is a very effective method, because it is always easier to find a mistake by thinking "out loud".

I remember that at the time when the pandemic started I was also sometimes such a duck for my friends because we would go on discord, they would tell me their problems with the code and in the course of the story, they would find the answer to their questions themselves, thanking me for my help. At which, of course, I didn't answer anything, but only listened to what they had to say.

Here, thinking longer, we enter the psychological zone and the way humans work, it is really amazing and shows, in my opinion, that man is a herd animal because even though he can unravel a task on his own, he feels a strong need to express his thoughts out loud and share them.