> no serious work is done during pair
I think that's the most important point you made. Pair programming is not for all programming, and in fact the goal is not to produce code. It's more about sharing thought processes with other people
I think that's the most important point you made. Pair programming is not for all programming, and in fact the goal is not to produce code. It's more about sharing thought processes with other people
We did it because we decided it would be the most effective way to work. There were only two of us on the project, so it was very important that both of us understood all aspects of the design and code. It was important to us that we spot issues early and that our test cases were comprehensive (we also used generative property-based testing to find actual bugs, which included simulating network errors, crashes etc).
We designed on a whiteboard, then we would pair to implement it. We worked remotely about 50% of the time (using ScreenHero to do remote pair programming. I miss ScreenHero). Yes, the goal was to share thought processes, but it was also to produce high quality code, spot errors, come up with edge cases and tests. And to document everything.
Personally, it was one of the most successful projects I ever worked on. The pair programming was exhausting, but very effective.
I think this is where your impressive work is done, coding is just a chore, pair or not.
Regardless, pairing helped us keep the code quality up and defects low, as well as making sure everything was properly tested and all corner cases were being dealt with. It of course also helped make sure we both understood every aspect of the code.
The idea that pair programming is mainly a teaching / learning mechanism is very widespread, but it's a profound misunderstanding.
I've never used pairing, nor seen it used, other than as a way of helping get someone up to speed on a task in an area or process unfamiliar to them.
Seems to me that it has suffered the same fate as so many other original "Agile" practices: The image of them nowadays is gravely distorted, sometimes to the extent of being a caricature, of what they originally meant.
My boss usually pings me to do pair programing with him when:
- He wanted to write some half-thought codes he also wants me as co-author to it (literally 2 names on git commit)
- He wanted to do some dangerous things on production DB, he wanted me to be his witness, in case something went wrong, I would also share some guilt
It's really funny I would call this "pair responsibility"