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

A Deepness in the Sky

[vylasaven]

...if anyone is a sf fan here, there's an effect called Focus. It's when a human being is infected with a mind virus that allows for blah blah blah. Anyway, the users inevitably retreat to jargon in pairs or groups because they are in the process of doing things which have never been done before, so they invent tons of new terms on the spot, and occasionally grunt, hoot, and fight each other. It requires handlers, often, to get any use out of the people. This reminded me of that.