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What's up with the pair programming hate? I think it is great in the correct situations and would love to do more of it! 1. Get paired with another dev of simi

What's up with the pair programming hate? I think it is great in the correct situations and would love to do more of it! 1. Get paired with another dev of similar level to work on new stuff. Bouncing ideas makes the surfacing solutions better. 2. Get paired with a dev that has been working on some system for a while. This is a much quicker way to learn the what's and why's of a project.

thrower123 7y ago
Because it is awful for people who don't enjoy social interaction, and get quickly worn out by it. Which encompasses a much larger share of programmers than the general public. Everything in modern faddish programming seems to be aimed squarely at stressing out and destroying the effectiveness of introverts.
- cameronfraser 7y ago
  Pair programming isn't intended to be an all the time thing. A great example of pair programming is a new person gets hired and you pair program with them on a ticket so they can ask questions along the way. Having recently joined a remote startup I found this to be pretty essential to getting anything done. It's a great way of elevating programming level as well. You see different ways of doing things, different tools they use, etc. Introverts are also not being targeted in any way. People who have been at this a while are just very aware that you can get far more accomplished with a team that works well together than an individual developer can. You can be an introvert and still an effective team member. Nobody is fully introverted or fully extroverted.
michaelbuckbee 7y ago
Like everything the author listed it's about execution and applying the right tools to the right job. Some places _only_ do pair programming, some places go so wild with their unit tests that it becomes incredibly unwieldy, and lots of times different approaches get cargo culted from organizations where it made sense (we're a 10,000 member team writing a new OS) to a one where it doesn't (we're 2 people making a CRUD app side-project that got a little traction).

thrower123 7y ago

Because it is awful for people who don't enjoy social interaction, and get quickly worn out by it. Which encompasses a much larger share of programmers than the general public. Everything in modern faddish programming seems to be aimed squarely at stressing out and destroying the effectiveness of introverts.

cameronfraser 7y ago
Pair programming isn't intended to be an all the time thing. A great example of pair programming is a new person gets hired and you pair program with them on a ticket so they can ask questions along the way. Having recently joined a remote startup I found this to be pretty essential to getting anything done. It's a great way of elevating programming level as well. You see different ways of doing things, different tools they use, etc. Introverts are also not being targeted in any way. People who have been at this a while are just very aware that you can get far more accomplished with a team that works well together than an individual developer can. You can be an introvert and still an effective team member. Nobody is fully introverted or fully extroverted.

michaelbuckbee 7y ago

Like everything the author listed it's about execution and applying the right tools to the right job. Some places _only_ do pair programming, some places go so wild with their unit tests that it becomes incredibly unwieldy, and lots of times different approaches get cargo culted from organizations where it made sense (we're a 10,000 member team writing a new OS) to a one where it doesn't (we're 2 people making a CRUD app side-project that got a little traction).