Rubber Ducky Debugging

Many other terms exist for this technique often involving different usually inanimate objects or pets.

Rubber ducky debugging.

The reason we so love rubber duck debugging is that typically in the process of doing this you ll find your problem. The method itself is quite simple. How do i do it. Rubber duck debugging is intended to cure you of the tunnel vision that programmers often fall victim to by forcing you to acknowledge and explain each piece it s as if you re looking at the code with a fresh set of eyes all over again.

Place rubber duck on desk and inform it you are just going to go over some code with it if that s all right. The rubber duck debugging method is as follows. Obtain a rubber duck. About talk to a duck.

Open cyberduck terminal. Find your stupid obvious solution. Rubber ducking is an informal term used in software engineering for a method of debugging code. Your ide has been less than helpful and you ve read the suspect code top to bottom for the last 20 minutes.

You made a small typo. Any duck will do. Rubber duck debugging a k a. Cyberduck is based on work by joseph weizenbaum and norbert landsteiner.

If your duck friend hasn t spotted it yet be sure to explain all the intermediate states and transitions in detail. Talk with a duck. 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. Larger bath time ducks are preferred but keyring ducks are acceptable and can be handy to keep around.

Rubber duck debugging explained imagine if you will a sneaky bug that you just cannot put your finger on. Debugging software with a rubber ducky. In software engineering rubber duck debugging is a method of debugging code. Don t skip details ducks love details.

Eliza a computer program for the study of natural language communication between man and machine.