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Debugging by explaining your problem out loud, step by step, until you spot the flaw yourself.
Named for programmers who keep a rubber duck on the desk and narrate their code to it; the act of articulating each assumption forces you to notice the wrong one. An LLM is the upgraded duck — it can talk back, but the value is still mostly in you stating the problem clearly. Example: 'I was about to file a bug, then rubber-ducked it to the chat and found my own off-by-one.' Slowing down to explain is the whole technique.
Plainly
Think of Rubber Ducking as a simple recipe for doing the work better. Debugging by explaining your problem out loud, step by step, until you spot the flaw yourself.
In practice
Use it when you need a repeatable method instead of guessing from vibes. In practice, define the owner, input, output, and failure mode before you rely on it.