4 ms·

My experience is that PRs quickly turn into a chokepoint which breeds delays and rework. Genuine bugs are rarely found, almost all the feedback is idiom and cla

My experience is that PRs quickly turn into a chokepoint which breeds delays and rework. Genuine bugs are rarely found, almost all the feedback is idiom and clarity -- valuable, but I can get the same feedback synchronously from a pair. Note the reference to frequently committing to HEAD. That's not an accident, it encourages everyone to rebase frequently, keep changes small and to surface problems almost immediately. Whereas PRs quickly go stale and it turns into a game to try and get your PR in first.

scarface74 8y ago
And having two developers pair programming instead of them both working on separate releasable features is more efficient?
- jacques_chester 8y ago
  In my experience of the past 5 years: yes. Substantially better idea-to-production latency, given a high minimum standard for releaseability. Little's Law is instructive. There are two ways to increase throughput in a system. One is to reduce latency. The other is to increase in-process inventory. They have very different dynamics.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    Most software development like everything else is a combination of inspiration and perspiration. How much time is spent in average day coming up with “ideas” versus just doing the work? Or putting it in production terms, the number of people coming up with ideas for the iPhone in Cupertino is dwarfed by the number of people building them in China.
    - jacques_chester 8y ago
      I'm not sure what you're driving at here.
      - scarface74 8y ago
        That you don’t need pair programming to do much of the grunt work that’s involved in development. Do you really need help making sure you write a for loop correctly?
        jacques_chester 8y ago
        I do if I'm about to do it wrong, or if something other than a loop might be better, or to write the test that drives it out, or to show me a trick I didn't know, or to get me unstuck, or to tell me there's a library function that lets us skip a loop, or ... Is your argument that I don't know how pairing works? Because my estimate is that I have around 8,000 hours practicing it at this point, which I suspect may be 8,000 hours or so more than your own professional pairing experience. It's possible that I've been sleep-walking through the whole thing, but unlikely. One of the dozens of intelligent, helpful people I've worked with would've pointed it out.
        scarface74 8y ago
        I’ve been writing code for over 30 years including two assembly language instruction sets (one before going to high school), and C on 4 platforms. I’ve been using my preferred language C# for a decade and JavaScript since it was introduced by Netscape in the 90s. I think I’m capable of writing decent performant code without pairing....
        jacques_chester 8y ago
        In my anger I turned this into a measuring contest. I think what you're reading is me saying "it's impossible to write good code without a pair", which (a) isn't true and (b) isn't what I said. What I'm reading is that you say pairing is strictly less effective than soloing, which (a) isn't true and (b) isn't true. If we were talking about professionally programming in assembly language, I would take your views seriously because of your relevant experience in that matter. In doing so I might not agree and I would very likely be wrong, but I would acknowledge your expertise on that topic. What I ask is the same courtesy when it comes to pairing.

scarface74 8y ago

And having two developers pair programming instead of them both working on separate releasable features is more efficient?

jacques_chester 8y ago
In my experience of the past 5 years: yes. Substantially better idea-to-production latency, given a high minimum standard for releaseability. Little's Law is instructive. There are two ways to increase throughput in a system. One is to reduce latency. The other is to increase in-process inventory. They have very different dynamics.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Most software development like everything else is a combination of inspiration and perspiration. How much time is spent in average day coming up with “ideas” versus just doing the work? Or putting it in production terms, the number of people coming up with ideas for the iPhone in Cupertino is dwarfed by the number of people building them in China.
  - jacques_chester 8y ago
    I'm not sure what you're driving at here.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      That you don’t need pair programming to do much of the grunt work that’s involved in development. Do you really need help making sure you write a for loop correctly?
      - jacques_chester 8y ago
        I do if I'm about to do it wrong, or if something other than a loop might be better, or to write the test that drives it out, or to show me a trick I didn't know, or to get me unstuck, or to tell me there's a library function that lets us skip a loop, or ... Is your argument that I don't know how pairing works? Because my estimate is that I have around 8,000 hours practicing it at this point, which I suspect may be 8,000 hours or so more than your own professional pairing experience. It's possible that I've been sleep-walking through the whole thing, but unlikely. One of the dozens of intelligent, helpful people I've worked with would've pointed it out.
        scarface74 8y ago
        I’ve been writing code for over 30 years including two assembly language instruction sets (one before going to high school), and C on 4 platforms. I’ve been using my preferred language C# for a decade and JavaScript since it was introduced by Netscape in the 90s. I think I’m capable of writing decent performant code without pairing....
        jacques_chester 8y ago
        In my anger I turned this into a measuring contest. I think what you're reading is me saying "it's impossible to write good code without a pair", which (a) isn't true and (b) isn't what I said. What I'm reading is that you say pairing is strictly less effective than soloing, which (a) isn't true and (b) isn't true. If we were talking about professionally programming in assembly language, I would take your views seriously because of your relevant experience in that matter. In doing so I might not agree and I would very likely be wrong, but I would acknowledge your expertise on that topic. What I ask is the same courtesy when it comes to pairing.