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Facebook and Buzzfeed sound like awfully solvable problems. Just install Leechblock and set a block for them during work hours. The rest sounds like mis-manage

by 50CNT 10y ago

Facebook and Buzzfeed sound like awfully solvable problems. Just install Leechblock and set a block for them during work hours. The rest sounds like mis-management issues, which I think has more to do with lack of analysis than programming itself. Porting Agile or Scrum to an organization and not checking whether that port breaks things is absolutely insane, but it seems par for the course nowadays (imagine how much shit a sysadmin would get for setting up Apache and his setup refused all requests...ah well). Same goes for pair programming. Does it work better than the alternative? Yes? Great. No? Knock it off then. What are PC unit tests? Code reviews seem like a great thing IFF they work properly. Proofreading, style compliance, teaching, catching errors, etc. If none of those things happen, they are pointless. Might as well swap the company cars with wheel-less Tesla's or something. It just sounds like you've got the management equivalent of a bad sysadmin going.

at-fates-hands 10y ago
>>> same goes for pair programming. Does it work better than the alternative? Yes? Great. No? Knock it off then. I've worked at small and large companies and I've had the same experience with pair programming. It's done as a means to supplant actual, formal training. It's utilized as a shortcut to get a dev vaguely familiar with the architecture of your system and do rudimentary tasks so they can jump in and start working in a day or so. The painful downside of not adequately training your developers is tasks take longer, other more experienced devs are sapped by helping other devs who continually ask them questions and keep them from getting their stuff done because they can't find something, or simply don't know the proper process. I've been on both sides and seems like proper training is really a thing of the past. No company wants to invest the time in their developers to give them the tools and knowledge to really do their job well. As a replacement, you get "pair programming" as a substitute to proper training program. And yes, I know this isn't the point of pair programming at all. But lately (last three years or so), this is how the companies I've worked at use it. The ironic thing is several of the companies I worked at had a two to three week sales training which culminated in a test to make sure you knew the companies products inside and out. Developers? Maybe a lunch with a lead dev, or a twenty minute whiteboard explanation about their system architecture.
- skybrian 10y ago
  I'll take pair programming over sitting in a classroom listening to an instructor drone on any day. The one time I joined a pair-programming shop, I thought diving in and being productive on the first day on the job to be pretty great. Usually I get neither and have to figure it out from the code. I've found that writing documentation for the next person as you figure it out to be a nice way to get started.

by 50CNT 10y ago

at-fates-hands 10y ago

>>> same goes for pair programming. Does it work better than the alternative? Yes? Great. No? Knock it off then. I've worked at small and large companies and I've had the same experience with pair programming. It's done as a means to supplant actual, formal training. It's utilized as a shortcut to get a dev vaguely familiar with the architecture of your system and do rudimentary tasks so they can jump in and start working in a day or so. The painful downside of not adequately training your developers is tasks take longer, other more experienced devs are sapped by helping other devs who continually ask them questions and keep them from getting their stuff done because they can't find something, or simply don't know the proper process. I've been on both sides and seems like proper training is really a thing of the past. No company wants to invest the time in their developers to give them the tools and knowledge to really do their job well. As a replacement, you get "pair programming" as a substitute to proper training program. And yes, I know this isn't the point of pair programming at all. But lately (last three years or so), this is how the companies I've worked at use it. The ironic thing is several of the companies I worked at had a two to three week sales training which culminated in a test to make sure you knew the companies products inside and out. Developers? Maybe a lunch with a lead dev, or a twenty minute whiteboard explanation about their system architecture.

skybrian 10y ago
I'll take pair programming over sitting in a classroom listening to an instructor drone on any day. The one time I joined a pair-programming shop, I thought diving in and being productive on the first day on the job to be pretty great. Usually I get neither and have to figure it out from the code. I've found that writing documentation for the next person as you figure it out to be a nice way to get started.