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For me personally, I hate it. Mainly for ideological reasons. I believe that when I'm "programming," most of it is spent in thought or jotting things down on pa
by banachtarski 13y ago
For me personally, I hate it. Mainly for ideological reasons. I believe that when I'm "programming," most of it is spent in thought or jotting things down on paper. When it comes to actually typing things on a keyboard, I've already figured out exactly what should happen. Pair programming goes against this work methodology, so I don't subscribe to it. Naysayers tell me that I can work through the "thought process" in a pair too. No, I can't. That's not how I work. I'd be happy to discuss my thoughts after I've had alone time, but that time is critical for me to get things done at a reasonable rate.
- mbillie1 13y agoThat is a very reasonably response, and I certainly wouldn't push the idea that pair programming is great for everyone. It definitely works better for people with a particular personality type, and worse for people with other personality types. And I think it's a shame that the industry sometimes pushes things like pair programming as a panacea - like any "best" practice or agile catechism, it only works if it works for your developers. I just find a lot of resistance to pairing from people who have never even tried it, and I think that this is unfortunate, because it doesn't have to be as awful as it's often described here, reddit, etc.
- banachtarski 13y agoYea I was careful to qualify my preference as a "personal" one. As a former educator, I believe it can be helpful in some cases, especially for people in an "exploratory" stage where they haven't learned the best way to reason about things yet. However, once individuals start performing at a level where they have particular individual methodologies, pair programming manifests itself as an impedance mismatch.