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."

Comments

Worth trying

[Divide By Zero]

Everybody poo-poos it, I'm a better coder on my own, the other guy's wasting time, etc. But I tried it and I was never a better coder than when I was working in a pair. You'd get all the "missing semicolon" stuff that everybody talks about, which isn't exactly a waste, but you also have two brains deeply enmeshed in the code and data structures, so you can blend the best of two styles of programming. Sometimes I'd write a braindead construct and the other guy would simplify it, and sometimes he'd create this god-awful structure and I'd clean it up. But you can bounce ideas off another programmer without having to explain the function, show him the code, let him get his head wrapped around it, all that. It's not all grunting and pointing, sometimes it's, "Dude, use a switch/case" or "Just use the library function."

It's not for everybody - nothing is - but it's definitely worth trying with an honest effort.

Re:Suck it and see, it's not for everyone

[SomePgmr]

You used the word, "mentoring". It occurs to me that people have been doing this in virtually every trade for centuries in more traditional apprenticeships.

I was in a situation similar to this as a programmer. Nobody had planned for us to work in pairs, it just worked out that way. The bit in the summary about the two of you learning to basically read each others' minds is pretty accurate.

One guy tends to introduce the more creative, interesting ideas, while the other (probably more experienced guy) sees when you're missing the forest for the trees. The end result is, hopefully, more impressive work that's not so impressive that it fails at basic functionality.

It worked out really well for us. Of course, YMMV.