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It seems weird to me that some workplace would mandate physical(?) pair-programming as a default. And I actually like pair-programming, some of my best code wa
by a-saleh 10y ago
It seems weird to me that some workplace would mandate physical(?) pair-programming as a default.
And I actually like pair-programming, some of my best code was written with somebody sitting besides me and we have solved some really tricky bugs like this.
But we tend to do this only rarely. Most of my day is spent organizing stuff and reading emails anyway :-)
- aantix 10y agoI'm pretty sure Pivotal and Carbon Five, two high end Rails consulting firms in SF require pair programming. I'm pretty sure that you can't hire Pivotal without contracting two of their engineering, strictly for pair programming. Some of my best code has been written with pair programming but I can see the flip-side. There's no day-dreaming, there's no zoning out, complete engagement all day long. It's the same mental overhead as with taking care of toddlers; you have to be constantly aware otherwise suffer the consequences.. :)
- shostack 10y agoAny idea how much of that is to juice margins by billing two people minimum? Surely the work is not completed twice as quickly.
- twic 10y agoI work at Pivotal, although in London. We do indeed insist on doing all programming paired. I honestly don't think that's because of margins, though - it's that everyone buys into the XP idea that it's the best way to program. I don't think it does much for margins, because you have to spend twice as much on developers to get that double revenue, so the margin is the same. Our normal thing is to form joint teams of Pivotal and client developers, and in that situation, pairing is also a really good way to teach the clients our way of doing things.
- BurningFrog 10y agoI love pair programming teams, and would not want to work anywhere else. Of course, a team like that needs to only hire people who are up for that lifestyle.
- quotemstr 10y agoIt takes all types, I guess. I would sooner quit a job than pair program 20% of the time, much less 100%. I do my best work alone, in the dark, in the middle of the night. I don't think there's a tech company on earth that could pay me enough to spend dozens of hours each week sharing a keyboard and monitor with someone.
- twic 10y agoActually, a common way to do pairing these days is to give each person their own keyboard and monitor, just connected to the same computer. You probably still wouldn't like it much, sadly!
- brokenmachine 10y agoI agree 100%. One of the parts of my job that I dislike is watching people mouse around on the screen and try to type. There's something so frustrating about tracking someone else's mouse movements and typing and the impotent watching when you know where they're meant to click or what they're trying to type, but seeing them flail around, that I find very unpleasant. Also deflecting people's ideas I would find very tiring, having to explain why you don't want to do something you know is a bad idea, or explain why something you want to do is a good idea. Much more efficient to just do it in the best way you can think of, then have a code review later. Seems like a waste of resources to limit two people to doing the one job.
- quotemstr 10y ago> Much more efficient to just do it in the best way you can think of, then have a code review later. That's especially true on those occasions that you do something nobody believes is possible.