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What does an XP team room look like?

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Re: What does an XP team room look like?

#11
post #3

"We also followed the XP practice of pair programming, which is why you'll see only two desks for the four programmers." Pair programming is stupid. It is ok in only two situations: A senior engineer is teaching around a more junior engineer (or somebody that just started). There is a modification/urgent patch going on, that is touching very critical point of the application, or that is being done right before the pr…

I like pair programming when another programmer and I are about to start a project using technologies we're not familiar with. But each programmer should have a computer. It works well when one of you is projecting his screen and the other is on a laptop. In this situation both of you are going to have questions constantly and spend a decent amount of time looking up answers. You end up explaining things to each other as you figure them out.

Re: What does an XP team room look like?

#12
post #2

Blech. Who works on world-changing projects and uses the vernacular of 'XP' when discussing coding environments?

Paid XP adoption consultants like the guy who wrote the article.

Pair programming is awesome if you're a consultant. Who wouldn't want to bill out at twice the rate for nearly the same amount of output as a single developer?

Re: What does an XP team room look like?

#13
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like pair programming. It's not stupid - it's counterintuitive, and like any counterintuitive idea is vulnerable to snap dismissal, as your comment appears to exemplify. Anyone who's ever spent hours going down a rabbit hole that in retrospect was an obvious mistake may have a conception of why it's not necessarily a waste of resources. That, and anyone who realizes that programming isn't straightforward and he may…

Anyone who's ever spent hours going down a rabbit hole that in retrospect was an obvious mistake may have a conception of why it's not necessarily a waste of resources. That, and anyone who realizes that programming isn't straightforward and he may not have all the best ideas about how to do something. Sure, but many people know when they are about to go down a rabbit hole, and can just ask a colleague for some advic…

If you know in advance that it's a rabbit hole, that isn't what I meant by rabbit hole.

But I'm not sure what the point is. Arguments about pair programming in general never go anywhere. What was I thinking? Oh yeah, that it isn't "stupid".

I like making things together with others, and I like doing stuff on my own, and I like not being micromanaged and told how to work, and I think my code gets better when I work on it with somebody smart, and I think I contribute to other people's too. You figure me out.

Re: What does an XP team room look like?

#14
Any system that depends on whiteboards and cards (like XP and Agile seem to be obsessed with) is going to fail miserably when you have a development team / company spread across offices on different continents (hell, probably even different cities). I figure you could get by with using an equivalent webapp or some other application, though.

Please enlighten me if I'm wrong.

Re: What does an XP team room look like?

#17
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who's ever spent hours going down a rabbit hole that in retrospect was an obvious mistake may have a conception of why it's not necessarily a waste of resources. That, and anyone who realizes that programming isn't straightforward and he may not have all the best ideas about how to do something. Sure, but many people know when they are about to go down a rabbit hole, and can just ask a colleague for some advic…

If you know in advance that it's a rabbit hole, that isn't what I meant by rabbit hole. But I'm not sure what the point is. Arguments about pair programming in general never go anywhere. What was I thinking? Oh yeah, that it isn't "stupid". I like making things together with others, and I like doing stuff on my own, and I like not being micromanaged and told how to work, and I think my code gets better when I work on…

But I'm not sure what the point is. Arguments about pair programming in general never go anywhere. What was I thinking? Oh yeah, that it isn't "stupid".

You are putting words in my mouth. I didn't say anything about pair programming being stupid.

Re: What does an XP team room look like?

#18
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you know in advance that it's a rabbit hole, that isn't what I meant by rabbit hole. But I'm not sure what the point is. Arguments about pair programming in general never go anywhere. What was I thinking? Oh yeah, that it isn't "stupid". I like making things together with others, and I like doing stuff on my own, and I like not being micromanaged and told how to work, and I think my code gets better when I work on…

But I'm not sure what the point is. Arguments about pair programming in general never go anywhere. What was I thinking? Oh yeah, that it isn't "stupid". You are putting words in my mouth. I didn't say anything about pair programming being stupid.

No, the original comment did.
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