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Comment by nestorD | Hacker News Reader

One good tip I got to rubber duck debug without another human was to write your questions / explanations in an email or a chat.

I found that indeed, writing an email explaining a problem to a colleague was helpful to solve it despite me never sending the email.

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This. That's one of the reasons I'm glad I work in a team with competent colleagues. Not just because I would expect them to answer such an email/message/bug report comment competently, but I feel encouraged to reach out _and_ feel it necessary to already myself go into detail and explain all assumptions I have, everything how I see it, hypotheses etc. With "dumb" colleagues (which includes a rubber duck), I'd never do it on this level.

So, often times either I solve a problem while writing all this down to them (or for me/others to read later), or after one or two cycles of them pointing out something that they didn't understand or didn't follow. I'll then have to go back and clarify and maybe refresh/refine my own knowledge and it turns out that that's where the problem was.

This is often what happens when I ask questions on Stack Overflow.

I start a question and then realize I either have the answer or that the question does not make sense.

Yes! I compose an email to a big group of people I respect. That forces me to be extra careful.

I have had the same experience when drafting SO questions.

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