Rubber duck debugging

There is no original to identify: this spread through many separate posts at once rather than from a first one. ViralWorld holds no copy of it either — what it was, when it spread and what people called it is the record.

Nothing here is claimed to be the first version of this, because research established there was not one — it appeared in many places at once.

Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.

What happens

A programming practice named in The Pragmatic Programmer: describe the fault aloud, line by line, to a rubber duck. It works, which is why it survived from a book into a genuine internet-wide in-joke with its own merchandise.