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> Sprints and pairing become tools to keep devs on a hamster wheel. Always productive, in theory at least. SCRUM and sprints lend themselves to "hamster-wheel

> Sprints and pairing become tools to keep devs on a hamster wheel. Always productive, in theory at least. SCRUM and sprints lend themselves to "hamster-wheel management". That's an abuse, but it stilll gets labeled agile. Pair programming is amazing. Provided no pair has a total dullard (or worst: two dullards!), pairing with rotation quickly results in every member of the team knowing the whole project, so that any team member can pick up the work of any other team member. It also levels-up the skills of the whole team. Even mediocre devs can become good devs by working side-by-side with someone really good. On a per-task basis, I'm willing to grant that a pair might have lower velocity than two devs working alone. But the benefits of pairing with rotation for raising the standard of the whole team are striking. [I'm not saying that all work should be done as pairs; as in everything you have to use common sense.]

vertis 4y ago
I've had some amazing pairing sessions and really really terrible sessions (FWIW I try to be a good pair). I accept everything you say about pairing, it has some really good team impacts. It gets abused though far too often not just as a tool to upskill team members but also as a way to 'keep them honest'. The always on, always teaching/learning is exhausting. The constant social interaction is grueling, and I'm an ambivert (ENTP-A E=51%). I pity the actual introverts. I've discovered, years later, that I much prefer to be alone with my thoughts when programming. Not sure I'll ever go back to an open plan office either.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  Yes, I also found pairing exhausting. The hardest, most tiring, most-pointless pairing I participated in was with a diagnosed autistic. He was very clever; but I couldn't understand the code he wrote, and he couldn't explain what he was doing. And a lot of the code he wrote, I gradually discovered, wasn't actually helpful for the task.

vertis 4y ago

I've had some amazing pairing sessions and really really terrible sessions (FWIW I try to be a good pair). I accept everything you say about pairing, it has some really good team impacts. It gets abused though far too often not just as a tool to upskill team members but also as a way to 'keep them honest'. The always on, always teaching/learning is exhausting. The constant social interaction is grueling, and I'm an ambivert (ENTP-A E=51%). I pity the actual introverts. I've discovered, years later, that I much prefer to be alone with my thoughts when programming. Not sure I'll ever go back to an open plan office either.

denton-scratch 4y ago
Yes, I also found pairing exhausting. The hardest, most tiring, most-pointless pairing I participated in was with a diagnosed autistic. He was very clever; but I couldn't understand the code he wrote, and he couldn't explain what he was doing. And a lot of the code he wrote, I gradually discovered, wasn't actually helpful for the task.