rubber duck debugging

[ RUHB-er duhk dee-BUHG-ing ]noun

Explaining your problem out loud, line by line, to something that cannot answer, until you spot the mistake yourself.

Explanation

Made famous by The Pragmatic Programmer in 1999. The duck has since been promoted: it answers now, which helps about half the time.

Related words

• chain of thought — An AI working through the steps out loud before it gives you an answer.
• the loop — The heart of vibe coding: ask, look at what came back, correct it, ask again, until it matches what you meant.

Prompts that deal with it

• Hand It An Error — Give it more than “it broke”
• Explain It Like I Own It — For the builder who did not write the code