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.

Its kinda the same what youtubers do with cameras. They focus on them nearly to the point of treating it as a person.

@irene yeah but still you start with the thought of "even if my question is valid, this won't be able to help me"

It’s not the duck, the duck is a reflection of the most illiterate person you know. Explain your complex bugs to someone/something that couldn’t possibly understand in a way they could understand. By doing so, the solution usually arises.

@C0D4 yeah but that requires amazing imagination. It's like when people say "imagine you're in a safe place"
That never works when you can't imagine very well.

@ipinlnd it doesn’t really.

Do you talk all dev when around family / friends?
Or do you step back a bit and dumb it down some?

Same applies here. Except because you’re the one also trying to solve the problem it becomes easier to work out.

@C0D4 that's a good point. When you talk to yourself normally, you don't usually dumb it down

@ipinlnd see dev ducking as you would describe your problem on Stackoverflow so that another person will get your problem as well. sometimes laying down the problem will lead you automagically to the solution

The goal of talking to the duck, is formulating the problem. It's not about anyone but you.

Think about it like

You're creating a microservices architecture and are testing different containers... Something just won't work. You can spend hours troubleshooting or rebuilding containers.

Or you could speak to the duck; meticulously go through(formulate) your architecture, what you're trying to achieve and how you're trying to achieve it.

More often than not, the duck makes you realize you forgot something or are missing a crucial piece... Or that you didn't understand the problem fully to begin with.

Also, I have a party duck and Hampemberg duck. It's so satisfying to have a quick dev-duck rave when things go great 😂

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@Nanos giraffe

@Nanos well it's not like i know duck's language.

@Kandelborg I liken rubber duck troubleshooting to the gru memes, you suddenly go "wait... I did what?"

Relevant SMBC https://smbc-comics.com/comic/...

@Kandelborg i would like to see the party duck please