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Five risks of solo programming

• stcredzero 18y ago
  The ability to not adhere to accepted practices can sometimes be a big advantage. Sometimes there is a better way to do something, and working alone can give you the freedom to find it.
• keefe 18y ago
  "but it is just too risky to assume that a single person can prevent the creation of as many bugs as a pair can." Bug creation is not inevitable, it is a product of the developers. I can just as easily say, two people are twice as likely to make bugs and extol the virtues of solo programming... Writing code is about forming a generative model of the computer in your head so that you can imagine what the code will do before you write it. This allows you to build a good model of your problem and solve it. Depending on how fast the programmers are, they may have to slow down significantly due to a second person. What are the odds that two advanced, experienced, intelligent programmers able to put themselves into a state of flow independently will produce twice as much code working together as they would separately? I expect that if there is an advantage here, it is less than 30%. I think this article is a clear example of reasoning to a conclusion.