Rubber–ducking in public
Rubber–ducking is probably familiar to many software engineers — when the practice of simply articulating the problem one is facing leads to solving it. I find myself doing this inadvertently while sending slack messages to colleagues asking for help, or at least intending to do so. See, my social insecurities lead me to rewrite my messages multiple times, carefully making sure I’m not asking any “stupid” questions or leaving any important information out. I would switch back and forth between my message drafts and the problem itself as I carefully reflect on whether or not they are worth sending.
The thing is, in the vast majority of these situations, I end up solving my problem by simply writing it down and thinking it through. Would I have solved the problem quicker if I had just fired my message away? Maybe. But there’s a certain satisfaction that comes with solving a problem on your own.
I guess that’s what I’m trying to get out of this here blog. A place for me to write down my thoughts as I think them through. Maybe most of my posts here end up the same way as my slack messages, hours in drafts and eventually discarded. I hope not, but I guess time will tell.
Many, many, many writers before me have argued for the importance of writing things down. My take is a maybe little bit different, but here are some other examples on the topic: