Introduction

As the story goes, there was once a programmer with a bug. They wanted help solving the bug, so they asked a colleague. In the process of explaining the bug to the college, they solved the bug.

The theory is that in the process of explaining the bug, the programmer was forced to unravel parts of their model for how their code worked. In the process of this unraveling, they discovered parts of their model that were false, which led to a solution.

The programmer realized that they could just use a rubber duck instead of a human.

(And they say that programmers are going to be among the last to be automated.)

Socratic ducking is a pair-debugging strategy that attempts to take advantage of this phenomenon.

Socratic Ducking

The virtue of socrates is the ability to ask questions.

The virtue of the rubber duck is the inability to speak.

The virtue of the socratic duck is the inability to speak except to ask clarifying questions.

The process of socratic ducking involves you, the protagonist, finding a partner to be your socratic duck, then talking to them about your bugs. The socratic duck remains mostly silent, except to ask clarifying questions.

Remember, the techniques are not the point, but the bugs are even less of the point than the techniques.

The point of socratic ducking is not to solve the protagonists problems. The point of socratic ducking is to have the protagonist practice their ability to solve their own problems. To this end, the socratic duck should nearly always be silent: a rough guide is asking one question at most every 5 minutes. Even if it what the protagonist doesn't quite make sense to socratic duck, as long as the socratic duck thinks that what the protagonist is saying makes sense to them, then the duck should remain silent.

For instance, if you're being someone's socratic duck, they might say something like "it makes me feel like a spiky sheep". Internally, you might be thinking "what the heck is a spiky sheep", but externally you should nod and act like you know what they're talking about (provided that you do think that "spiky sheep" makes sense to them).

It might be useful to notice the temptation to try and help them solve their bug for them. A way to placate these desires is to have "debrief" at the end of socratic ducking where you can give the protagonist all the object level advice you thought of.

Self-ducking

Epistemic status: h

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Ian Varley

Ian Varley