Comments on: Thoughts on two months of pairing

By: links for 2011-04-11 | Michael Ong | On9 Systems

links for 2011-04-11 | Michael Ong | On9 Systems — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 00:21:51 +0000

[...] Sarah Mei » Thoughts on two months of pairing (tags: pair programming practices experience) [...]

By: victor miclovich

victor miclovich — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 08:41:39 +0000

Lovely post. I tried some pair programming but found that there are times where need to keep the God to thyself. Any way, I love the concept and I’m slowly slipping to XP!

By: PMI San Diego Chapter | Home

PMI San Diego Chapter | Home — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:29:18 +0000

[...] Thoughts on two months pairing – Sarah Mei reflects on her experience pair programming and the benefits it has provided her professional & personal life. [...]

By: Bejji

Bejji — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:31:09 +0000

I actually thought that the curious cat management blog was ACTUALLY about managing my curious cat. I was slightly disappointed. ):

By: Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog » Management Improvement Carnival #102

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:36:51 +0000

[...] Thoughts on two months of pairing by Sarah Mei – “I don’t take shortcuts. I write the tests first. I refactor code that needs it. I focus on doing the simplest thing that could possibly work, without being sloppy. I make sure I understand what I’m doing before I do it.” [...]

By: AgileBill Krebs

AgileBill Krebs — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 13:09:08 +0000

That is so true about focus. A lot of the benefits to pairing are intangible. Focus. Gradual dissemination of knowledge about the team as we rotate pairs – not just about the code, but about tools. You make a good point about how helpful it is to have a pair partner there to remind you to do TDD etc. …AgileBill4d

By: M

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 15:34:25 +0000

I think pair programming is a combination of getting rid of your bad habits solo and having two minds working on the same problem. It certainly doesn’t amplify productivity but it makes each party more productive.

Re: The section on the 9-to-5er… I know tons of people in all sorts of fields who keep their work at work. And you know what? They’re totally awesome at their jobs. Just because you don’t like to bring work home, and you don’t spend your days and nights coding and reading tech blogs doesn’t mean you’re not excellent at what you do. And anyone who feels superior because they spend their days doing just that should probably take a reality check and then take a break every once in a while and see there’s more to life than that.

By: Tim Lesher

Tim Lesher — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 16:49:04 +0000

I often hear programmers – mostly young, mostly single – talk disparagingly about “commodity programmers.” They usually mean people who program at work but spend their free time on other stuff, and aren’t really interested in tech.

I think we have similar but different definitions of “commodity programmers”.

To me, and in other places I’ve heard it, it refers to programmers who treat their work as generating programs in return for pay, and nothing more. That does tend to exclude the folks who have a personal interest in programming and do it in their free time, but that’s not the main criterion.

The key feature of a “commodity programmer” is a lack of interest in either advancing the state of their craft, or advancing their own skills, other than as a means to find a better place to assemble widgets in return for pay. Literally, commodity programmers view their work as a commodity to be produced in order to get paid.

So while the folks who program both as a job and as a hobby are rarely commodity programmers by this definition, there are plenty of non-commodity programmers who don’t practice total tech immersion.

By: Jeff V

Jeff V — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 01:19:04 +0000

Great post about pairing. I’ve been working on getting my team to embrace it more, but the initial uptake has been slow to say the least. Am going to forward your post along to help show the benefits of pairing as seen from the trenches. That should help them better embrace my pushing further down this road in the coming weeks.

By: PandaWood

PandaWood — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:29:14 +0000

On the “commodity programmer” – I generally hold the same view.
However, I’ve come to realise the level of interest in doing after-hours coding, moves in waves. For months at a time, I may not do much coding after hours – but may focus on reading about biology or buy a new camera and spend time editing photos and thinking about new lenses or editing old videos etc
Stretching your interests like this may be necessary to generating new ideas and new projects to work on