Pair Programming session

January 15th, 2010

Today I had a really enjoyable pair programming session with my college Øyvind. It was quite some time ago since our last session, which was when we were both working at a customer together.

We were there for a few months and during this time we experimented with different ways of pair programming. It was also the first time we where pairing together, and all do it went very well, and we both learned a lot from (and about) each others, by the different ways of working and thinking, it felt unnatural to me. Or perhaps I should say, not completely right.

It was too much guided by rules, we for example tried ping pong; which means that you change from being a driver to a navigator between each and every test. But we tried other approaches as well to determine when to switch between roles.

But today was different, completely different I have to say. Today we were not driver or navigator, today we were both at the same time and constantly. Sure only one of us had the keyboard at the same time, but the switching was so rapidly and irregular that there was no real pattern to discover (not that I was looking for one). One only had to give a slight hint that he wanted to try something and the switch was made, and the same applied to passing back the keyboard.

If I had to compare it to something else I would say that it felt like we where both standing in front of a whiteboard heavily discussing the design and what the next steps to take would be. Both equally involved and drawing together to make the picture complete.

Needless to say that I felt very energized during the session and drained from energy afterwards, in short this is for me what pair programming is about.

I also recommend you to read this great explanation on how pair programming really works (PDF).

Mark Nijhof

  • http://chadmyers.lostechies.com Chad Myers

    We usually set up two monitors, two usb keyboards and two usb mice on one PC and do what you said: rapid switch pairing in a soort of ping-pong format, but not ritualistically. We use ping pong to keep track of who is currently responsible for the test going green, but both people are typing at the keyboard, one switching with the next every few seconds or minutes. The feedback cycle is great and we get a lot done fast and done right

  • Øyvind Fanebust

    I agree, a really fun session :)

    I do think ping pong is a great way to get started pairing and get a “rhytm” going though. When you are comfortable with this mode of working I think pairing sessions like this come more naturally.

  • http://dnperfors.blogspot.com David Perfors

    My colleague and I are sitting in the same room and we use VNC to look at each others computer. I really enjoy that, sitting on my own computer and helping each other is great. Although I can’t really talk about pair programming…

  • http://simpleprogrammer.com John Sonmez

    Its amazing how effective pair programming can be. It is really good to expand your horizons a bit, and great for training. I wrote about the benefits here: http://simpleprogrammer.com/2009/12/11/pair-programming-why/

    Thanks for the PDF that is a good read. I think what you describe and neither being navigator or driver is the best way to go, but it usually takes two the the same level of development skill.

  • http://elegantcode.com/about/mark.nijhof/ Mark Nijhof

    @Chad Myers
    Absolutely agree, it is a great way of programming. But why is one responsible for making the test green, why not both? The same for writing the tests.

    How are your two monitors setup? Are they both showing the same content or use one main and a secondary monitor (this is what we have).

    @Øyvind Fanebust
    Yeah but I still felt that we pushed the strict rules for much too long.

    @David Perfors
    I think that especially the part that you are missing is the very direct communication and body language, is one of the things that make pair programming so valuable. Are you working remotely?

    @John Sonmez
    Øyvind an I had been pair programming for about 7 months as well together with other members of the team at the client, and I had been doing it before that as well, but this time was for sure the most effective and pleasurable time. I am going to write a follow-up post on this as well.

  • http://elegantcode.com/2010/01/16/pair-programming-continued/ Elegant Code » Pair Programming continued

    [...] my previous post I talked about how I experience a really good pairing session, and in this post I like to discuss [...]

  • Szymon Kulec

    When one had the keyboard, the second could have had the mouse. That would be really extreme ;-)

  • http://andypalmer.com Andy Palmer

    There are around 70 unedited videos of pair programming at pairwith.us. One of the nice things is that the code being built is real code, rather than a worked example.

  • http://dnperfors.blogspot.com David Perfors

    @Mark Nijhof
    No we are sitting in the same room and looking at each other :) That we use VNC is just for convenience, so that we don’t have to move to each others side of the room, and besides that our desks have different heights which make working on the same desk uncomfortable.

    The reason why I don’t call it pair programming is because we are not really switching constantly. It is just when one of us has a problem we look at each others computer and communicate, some times this results in coding (mostly from my side I guess…) but most of the times it is not.

    Basically this is (I think) because my colleague is taking over the project and I have to explain a lot of the code (shame on the people who started the project (and on me) they/we didn’t do much testing..)

  • http://blog.cwa.me.uk/2010/01/18/the-morning-brew-51-2/ The Morning Brew – Chris Alcock » The Morning Brew #519

    [...] Pair Programming session – Mark Nijhof talks about a recent good pair programming experience, and follows up with a post (Pair Programming continued) which looks at some of the factors and facilities required to make pairing a success. [...]

  • http://www.arrangeactassert.com Jag Reehal

    Hi Mark,

    Good post.

    While pair programming can work I have seen cases where it doesn’t work. Read my post Pair Programming Is Not a Silver Bullet http://www.arrangeactassert.com/pair-programming-is-not-a-silver-bullet/

    Cheers,

    Jag

  • http://elegantcode.com/2010/02/01/slicing-the-day/ Elegant Code » Slicing the day

    [...] along the way, one of them is that pairing (a practice that I value very much, read more about that here and here) becomes very difficult because most of your college’s would not be slicing the day [...]

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