Inside the World of Extreme Programming

Webi writes ""XP[http://www.extremeprogramming.org/] works best for medium-sized teams where a product can be delivered in stages, and where there's freedom to experiment with some of the more controversial techniques," author Ron Jeffries said. http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/20348.html"

Comments

Pair programming

[Lumpish Scholar]

I've always found the whole "buddy programming" concept (part of XP), where one person watches the other code and points out errors, to be incredibly annoying.... you're wasting a good programmer having them sit there and call things out

Right, that would be dumb; but that's not what XP calls for.

Pair programming calls for two people working together. At any given instant, only one person has the keyboard and mouse; but they get passed back and forth, and the person who's not typing is doing a lot more than "watching." It's as natural as two people designing together on a blackboard, once you get the hang of it.

Does it work? There's lots of evidence it's worked for a lot of people who've tried it (including me).

Does it always work, for everyone, in every project? That's an open question. The only way it'll be answered is if more people try to program in pairs.

The definitive book on the subject is Pair Programming Illuminated by Laurie Williams and Robert Kessler (Amazon.com, BN.com); recommended.

Pair programming is not the first XP practice a project should try. Could a project get a lot of value out of XP without doing pair programming? I think yes, and I'm an advocate of programming in pairs; the question is open to debate.