Even for juniors and new grads, at school people code next to each other all the time.
Even for juniors and new grads, at school people code next to each other all the time.
sitting next to someone while they code
Then that's not pair programming. Pairing is an act of give and take, Ying and Yang, Ping and Pong, and sometimes Tweedledee and Tweedledumb. Sitting next to someone looking over their shoulder solving a problem that you know the answer to is not pair programming. There is no act of mutual discovery at all.This is a terrible idea. If they come up with a brilliant solution can you actually use this in production? Who owns the code they write during an interview?
The last time I did anything like that was over 10 years ago. How would that skew your hiring process?
I have pair programmed (over 10 years ago) and I never saw any benefit from it. I work in an environment where every line of code checked into the repository is reviewed and documented in agonizing detail (welcome to the wonderful world of Medical Device software!) and I completely fail to see the benefit of pair programming.
But actually creating new code with someone sitting there - that's something that's not something I've seen often