

Ask the Duck - problem solving by verbalising - paulsilver
http://hwrnmnbsol.livejournal.com/148664.html

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paulsilver
At my first programming job, I had an agreement with the head of IT (and SQL
server DBA) that we'd act as the same sort of problem-solving sounding board
as the duck in this story. It worked well, even though he understood little of
what I was doing, and I only understood the basics of what he talked about.
Just verbalising a problem is a very good way of thinking around it in a
different way than you had before.

These days I'm freelance and am usually working on my own, so I tend to start
e-mails explaining the problem to mailing lists, then realise what I'm doing
wrong and ditch the e-mail before it's sent.

