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To me, your comment spells out quite conclusively that you have not been part of a good pairing environment. It is good that you see the knowledge transfer ben
by qhoxie 17y ago
To me, your comment spells out quite conclusively that you have not been part of a good pairing environment.
It is good that you see the knowledge transfer benefits, but I much prefer thinking of it as knowledge distribution rather than transfer. By this I mean that your setup creates continual knowledge gaps and then fills them in the pairing session. That seems much less valuable than actually distributing the knowledge throughout the team by pairing all of the time.
I recommend you keep an open mind about the other major benefits of pairing and that you actively seek good pairing opportunities. It is worth it and you will know it when you experience good pairing.
- skolor 17y agoIt was a terrible pair programming environment. Pair programming was simply being used to up the average grade of the class (which succeeded). I disagree with saying that constantly distributing knowledge by always pairing is a better situation. It makes the assumption that everything that can be known about a system is already known, which doesn't often (ever?) hold true. By separating out, you can cover far more area and find more of those unknowns, while coming together for regular pair sessions helps spread that newly discovered information around.
- qhoxie 17y agoIt makes the assumption that everything that can be known about a system is already known No, it does not. I'm not sure where you extracted that from in my comment. Also, if you are aware that your environment was terrible, it seems presumptuous to assess the benefits of pairing in a good environment. I assure you there is more than teaching at play.