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The Programmers Go Coding Two-by-Two — Hurrah?
theodp writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that pair programming is all the rage at tech darlings Facebook and Square. Its advocates speak in glowing terms of the power of pair programming, saying paired coders can catch costly software errors and are less likely to waste time surfing the Web. 'The communication becomes so deep that you don't even use words anymore,' says Facebook programmer Kent Beck. 'You just grunt and point.' Such reverent tones prompted Atlassian to poke a little fun at the practice with Spooning, an instructional video in which a burly engineer sits on a colleague's lap, wraps his arms around his partner's waist and types along with him hand over hand."
Like many workplace practices, it's something worth trying, but not something to be trumpeted as "the way" to do things. Some people get on with pairing, some don't. And it's OK either way. Likewise, there are writers who work in pairs, but many who do great work alone. There are architects who work in groups and alone. So it goes for software developers.
Where it goes sour, however, is when people who find pair programming valuable start tarring anyone who doesn't do it as being error-prone slackers.
If the Facebook team is using pair programming for their mobile apps (on all platforms!), maybe they should try something more traditional because it's not working! They have so many bugs and glitches in the IOS, Android (tablet), and Blackberry apps that they definitely need to try a new approach! Maybe if they TESTED them before releasing, they'd have better results?
This space for rent, inquire within.
I know it's just a summary and all, but it makes me feel vaguely sad that out of all of the things you can say about him, Kent Beck is tagged as a "Facebook programmer."
More Programming, Motherfucker.
That is because new programmers don't have experience solving problems, and end up getting stuck spinning their wheels. For them, programming is the challenge. For more experienced people, the programming is trivial, it is the design that is a challenge.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
I wonder if this has something to do with the nature of the people who went into programming 20 years ago (compared to today), or what...?
After you live and work through 10 or so silver bullet fads you'll get a bit jaded at "oh god not yet another silver bullet that'll magically fix everything if we just change everything and hire some expensive consultants".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet
My main whine about pair programming is its a bastardization of ye olde master/apprentice. Oh so close to being correct, yet still miss the target. That's worked in about a zillion other fields for only about a zillion centuries. I learned a lot as an apprentice from some good masters and taught a few apprentices as a master, hopefully well. Pair programming claims master/apprentice inevitably leads to "watch the master" where the apprentice sits around and learns nothing. That's wrong; its not an inherent effect of master/apprentice, it's an inherent effect of shittymaster/apprentice. It does correctly show that having a con man or moron as master doesn't work, or maybe the older the programmer is the more important it is that he not be an idiot. Also its the apprentice's job not to be passive... ask why, ask how it works, ask what other options exist, etc.
I suppose you can't charge $xxx/hr as a consultant or book author merely by telling the boss to set up something like a medieval blacksmithing guild, gotta come up with some new twist on the old story.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Or drive the few women in tech far far away....
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
I've had experience with pair programming. In my mind here are the pro's:
1. It keeps you engaged and prevents your mind from wandering.
2. It is a great way to teach junior level programmers, many of whom suffer from a lack of training and are thrown to the wolves in the beginning of their careers. I would have LOVED pair programming (in small doses) when I was starting out. It's a great way to learn things about a complex system that are not obvious.
3. Different people tend to approach problems differently, and this difference in perspective can make it easier to catch bugs that are not obvious to a single programmer.
The Cons:
1. When abused, it can reduce productivity by distracting coders and not allowing them the space they need to think.
2. It can create a hostile environment where the employee feels that they have no privacy, room to think, and where they are constantly being watched. This is part of why I think management loves it so much, they are outsourcing micro-management to their underlings.
3. It can reduce motivation of individual developers since the buck no longer stops with them, but instead is the group's (or pair's) responsibility. While diffusing some responsibility across the team is not a horrible idea, people tend not to be as motivated. I observed motivation take a big nose dive when the shop moved to XP, since people were no longer as accountable for finishing anything, they just had to come up with a BS explanation for what they did the past day during the scrum, and really, it's a lot easier to BS one day at a time than it is to explain just what the hell you've been doing the past two months.
4. Many poorly designed XP programming environments are inherently disrespectful, and are merely an attempt to turn a programming shop into a factory floor with no privacy. As a skilled programmer, I won't go along with this, and I actually refused to move into this kind of space at my last job, and instead left, along with the majority of seasoned developers.
Overall, I can get some of the benefits of pair programming by walking down the hall, grabbing another team member and saying, "Hey, could you take a look at this?", when I'm having trouble finding a bug. It shouldn't require them to sit there all day.
Let's face it...this is yet another iteration of the dance we've seen before. Extreme Programming, Agile Programming, and so on. Companies keep hoping that there's a methodology that can be applied to the process of coding and development that will homogenize their workforce, allowing them to look at coders more like cookie-cutter individuals. There are multiple drivers behind this: the difficulty of assessing a programmer's talent during the recruiting process, the desire to use cheaper resources, especially in outsourced business models, and the challenges that result from coders who turn out not to be a good fit with their role. But at the end of the day, coding is a creative process, and creativity fares poorly under standardized, one-size-fits-all models.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
1999 called, they want their useless waste of resources techniques back. Nice try Kent trying to jam Extreme Programming on us again.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust