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Tuple: Pair Programming Tool for macOS

tuple.app

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Re: Tuple: Pair Programming Tool for macOS

#71
post #12
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it works well, but the only reason we used it instead of Tuple was that it's free right now. Tuple's pricing is rather absurd ($25/user/mo.) unless your org pairs so often you can justify it on the basis of 40 hour/week use. Pop's free tier lets us pop on actual controlled sharing when simple screen sharing isn't enough.

I hear you. We're pricey. Just curious – what would a workable price/model been for you?

ScreenHero, IIRC, went from free to roughly that same pricing, and crashed and burned because everyone had gotten used to free. I absolutely loved the software, but it wasn't critical to our workflow at my job at the time.

Unfortunately Teams, while terrible, is sufficiently usable that I don't see being able to persuade my current environment to adopt Tuple either.

I think, if I actually paired outside of work, I'd be willing to spend $5-$10/month just for casual non-commercial use. I'm not sure when I'd ever take advantage of such a pricing tier, sadly.

Re: Tuple: Pair Programming Tool for macOS

#73

I've worked at companies with 20 employees, and companies with 100,000 employees, and not once have I ever been asked to participate in pair programming. It would have been immensely useful in college, but VS Code already has a built-in tool that would do the job... and VS Code works on operating systems that I actually use. Who is using this? What do you use it for? I don't mean to be facetious, I have just never be…

That's strangely the opposite of my experience. I think you have to work at a company that values engineering culture. Also, you could suggest it.

Pair programming isn't inherent to good engineering culture. I would say that my employers have had phenomenal engineering culture, and the first couple had the best mentorship experiences I could have ever asked for.

Re: Tuple: Pair Programming Tool for macOS

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's strangely the opposite of my experience. I think you have to work at a company that values engineering culture. Also, you could suggest it.

Pair programming isn't inherent to good engineering culture. I would say that my employers have had phenomenal engineering culture, and the first couple had the best mentorship experiences I could have ever asked for.

Have you practiced it extensively though? You said you haven't professionally, so that leaves just personal experience. I would say it's not entirely critical, but I'd be very skeptical about a company's engineering if they didn't pair program. It would make me look closely at their other practices or lack of

Re: Tuple: Pair Programming Tool for macOS

#76
post #12
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it works well, but the only reason we used it instead of Tuple was that it's free right now. Tuple's pricing is rather absurd ($25/user/mo.) unless your org pairs so often you can justify it on the basis of 40 hour/week use. Pop's free tier lets us pop on actual controlled sharing when simple screen sharing isn't enough.

I hear you. We're pricey. Just curious – what would a workable price/model been for you?

It's totally reasonable. Don't take too much pricing advice from people who aren't using it.

A limited free trial can be good. But if you make it cheaper or free now, it's way harder to go back up In Price than it is to cut price later.

Re: Tuple: Pair Programming Tool for macOS

#77
I've been using Tuple professionally for a year and change and it's miles ahead of trying to share with Zoom or Slack. I love that it's not tied to a specific IDE, too! Being able to flip between terminals, IDEs, browsers, being able to paste directly into my pair's buffers, and take mouse control really make pairing remotely as great as possible. Almost as good as pairing with a shared workstation!

Re: Tuple: Pair Programming Tool for macOS

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pair programming isn't inherent to good engineering culture. I would say that my employers have had phenomenal engineering culture, and the first couple had the best mentorship experiences I could have ever asked for.

Have you practiced it extensively though? You said you haven't professionally, so that leaves just personal experience. I would say it's not entirely critical, but I'd be very skeptical about a company's engineering if they didn't pair program. It would make me look closely at their other practices or lack of

I very much get a cargo-cult vibe from this statement.

In a 30-year career, I’ve pair-programmed under 100 times. Usually to get someone up to speed on a confusing part of the code base.

In fact, I’d go as far as to say that if pair programming is a recurrent need, you need one or more of better engineers, better documentation, or better code reviews.

Re: Tuple: Pair Programming Tool for macOS

#79
post #55
post #13

Hi folks! I'm one of Tuple's cofounders. Happy to hear any feedback or answer questions :)

In places I've worked in, there's very little pair programming culture. If a dev needs help, maybe the reaction is "push your code to a special branch and I'll take a look later" or if it's really urgent "use screen sharing" instead. A lot of that comes down to different environments: some use Emacs, others use Vim, yet others use VSCode, and remote control isn't really effective because of all the different shortcut…

I can tell you how Pivotal solves this problem (or used to; my time was years ago): Standardize the configuration. If some special tool is making you more productive, share it with the team and get everyone on board. Don't try to be a special snowflake.

IMO this is the right way to do pair programming. It tends to bring everyone up to speed with the latest tools, and it keeps eccentrics out of the weeds. It's not to everyone's taste, of course. But neither is pair programming.

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