Why It's Good To Talk To Ducks
In software engineering rubber ducking is a method where you talk to a rubber duck (or an inanimate object; or sometimes even talking to someone but only you do the talking) and just by talking about the problem out loud you realize the answer yourself.
This is something that happens to many developers - sometimes we struggle to find an answer and when we finally decide to seek help we start describing the problem and then figure out what we need to do to solve it. You could, for example, be writing a question on Stack Overflow, and by doing so you may start to realize what the answer is yourself.
On April 1, 2018, Stack Overflow introduced a Rubber Duck on the corner.
That lasted just for the April 1 joke and was soon removed. But that was actually a great idea. I actually used it to solve an actual problem and thought it was really fun.
Insights are often found by simply describing the problem aloud.
— Duck, Quack Overflow
Inspired by this, we created Rubber Duck extensions for tools we use. Just seeing the duck icon on the corner is enough to remind us to stop and talk about the issue for a moment.
Rubber ducking increases agency and we at AE Studio like building products that increase agency with technology.
We hope you enjoy our fun little thing.