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Pair Programming at a Startup: time sink or saviour?
21–27 of 27 posts
Re: Pair Programming at a Startup: time sink or saviour?
#22Remember "Hackers and Painters". Painters like to work alone. http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html
Remember "Dabblers and Blowhards"
http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm
Re: Pair Programming at a Startup: time sink or saviour?
#23Isn't pairing just a more immediate (and annoying) form of code reviews? I'd take code reviews over pairing any day.
Indeed. Pair programming is basically a continuous peer code review. I think you can get most of the benefits of pair programming from code reviews for a fraction of the cost.
Re: Pair Programming at a Startup: time sink or saviour?
#24Pair programming is great since it's a mutual monitoring setup to prevent goofing off at work. You are far less inclined to read HN or Twitter if someone is sitting beside you watching. Likewise you are watching your coworker, too.
Think of the 2 to 3 hours real work done days? Now it's straight 8 hours of real work. You come out ahead even with two people at one job.
(just kidding)
Re: Pair Programming at a Startup: time sink or saviour?
#25Pair programming is great since it's a mutual monitoring setup to prevent goofing off at work. You are far less inclined to read HN or Twitter if someone is sitting beside you watching. Likewise you are watching your coworker, too. Think of the 2 to 3 hours real work done days? Now it's straight 8 hours of real work. You come out ahead even with two people at one job. (just kidding)
I actually think this is a valid point. The productivity gains from the lack of goofing off might not, by itself, cancel out the cost of two programmers, but in concert with the other benefits mentioned, like fewer bugs, it could result in a net gain in productivity.
Re: Pair Programming at a Startup: time sink or saviour?
#26I am very much against the idea. I do think there are valuable excercises where you work in a pair to do software design, however the idea of sitting behind the same computer for 2 days with the same person does not sound great. That being said, I am always happy to have 2nd pair of eyes look at some of my code, just not in the moment its being written.
I do like these Shelby guys though, so I would love to hear from them in more detail of how it went?
Re: Pair Programming at a Startup: time sink or saviour?
#27I'm not sure it's 2x productive, and can be annoying/tiring as hell. Much better used in moderation.