::scr Extreme Programming's Pair Programming

simon wistow scr@thegestalt.org
Mon, 1 Oct 2001 12:59:41 +0100


On Mon, Oct 01, 2001 at 12:52:22PM +0100, Simon Batistoni said:

> If you set up a good working partnership between pairs, where they
> work separately, but collaborate on difficulties, or on big
> decisions about the best way to implement a feature, I think you can
> maybe hope to get 2.5 peoples' worth of work out of 2. You end up
> with happier programmers, too, since they spend less time smashing
> their brains on the keyboard.

I tend to find I work better in pairs but not sitting at the same keyboard.

By working with someone else on the area (not bit) of code you tend to end up
with a saner design because the other person has to understand your code too.
Two people infront of one keyboard  means that you're going to be tripping
over each other but if your both working on the same area of code then when
you hit a problem there's somebody there who knows the problem, if not the
code as well as you do. This is also beneficial when trying to design the
structure of the program.

--
: nature notes for the apocalypse