Duckling method

The duckling method is a psychological method for solving a problem, delegating it to a mental assistant. The method is described in the book "Programmer-pragmatist."

The essence of the method lies in the fact that the test person puts a toy duckling on the desktop (or imagines him mentally), and when he has a question that is difficult to answer, he sets his toy as a living person, as if she can really answer. It is believed that the correct wording of the question contains at least half of the answer, and it also gives an impetus to the thoughts, directing them in the right direction.

The method is also used when debugging. If a certain part of the program does not work, the programmer tries to explain to the duckling what each line of the program does, and in the process it finds an error.