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Comment by clay_to_n | Hacker News Reader

How does pair programming work over chat? I feel like pair programming relies on you both looking at the same code + talking things through while one of you is actually coding. It seems like having to switch over to a chat client to communicate would decrease productivity a lot.

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I can't comment too much on the pair programming aspect. I know Floobits[1] has been floated around often. It seems most of the pair programming we do is with interns or junior developers, who are located at HQ until joining full-time/gaining more experience.

As mentioned below Screenhero is really great for 1v1s (they plan on adding team collaboration early this year).

For reference I wrote a post a while ago with some tools and methods we use at Catalyze. The only tools we've added to the list that aren't in this[2] post are trello and teamspeak.

1. https://floobits.com/

2. http://m97.co/writing/working-remotely-as-a-designer.html

How has Teamspeak worked out for you? We're actually building a similar product that's specifically for teams. I'd be curious to hear your feedback on it as it may be helpful for you. Here's a quick walkthrough https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV7HBXuhT7Q Let me know if you have any thoughts / ideas.

I've had good productive sessions by using Skype video screen sharing with headsets for talking. Some benefits over doing this at the office on a workstation include:

- less disruptive to others in an open space

- both have a good full screen view of the code

- both can use their second monitor to look things up or try something during the session

- it's easy to switch from one "master" computer to the other (eg. I fix something, commit, and we continue the session on the coworker's screen, on the environment he's comfortable with)

None of these things are exclusive to doing things remotely, but they're included by default.

While I prefer this for pair programming, I find coaching works best in person, where body language (understanding), off-screen talking and drawing stuff on a piece of paper, are more important.

http://screenhero.com/ is perfect for this, soon to be integrated natively into Slack.

We (Aptira) start a screen (as in GNU screen) session on a VM we both log into and use skype for audio. This also allows us to quickly swap who is driving and copy/paste in/out of the shared screen session, which is less fluid when using video based screen sharing.

This wouldn't work for folks who work in an IDE though, since it's terminal based.

Both programmers should have headsets and talk with each other.

One programmer shares screen with another programmer.

Both discuss what they are doing, what they should do.

One programmer codes. Another programmer monitors coding for bugs and sub-optimal implementation.

Communication tool: Skype (or possibly Google hangout?)

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