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Comment by hnnsj | Hacker News Reader

You're not alone. I, and everyone at work except perhaps our CEO, get probably 30 hours of focused programming done, with the caveat that probably around 75% of that programming is done in pairs. Which still feels like very productive programming most of the time. We do this by using the pomodoro technique and TDD (although I'm sure there are lots of other ways, and that it's mostly a combination of company philosophy and a fitting business model and product).

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I've always liked pairing because it ensures that you're both there to get the thing done, and generally I've found that it keeps both of us from goofing off (until the thing is done, then it's time to play). While the theoretical throughput would be 50% (two people doing one thing), it ends up being greater than if we had both tried to work on different things, since the one thing we're doing comes out better since it's getting reviewed while written + any problems which come up can be solved much much faster. Plus, both people always learn at least one little thing, typically more.

Pairing is just great. Works well for sysadmin stuff too, even if I'm mostly leading that and just bringing someone else along for the ride.

I like pairing for those reasons as well. Also, I can keep my concentration up more easily when there is a requirement for me to do so, e.g. when I'm intercommunicating. It's when I talk to myself that I get distracted the most.

I used to do the same as a defence contractor. We coded in a team of two, or sometimes with a third wheel who was learning. About 1.2x more productive, but rewrites and dead ends became rare.

What kind of business are you in that the entire company except the CEO is programmin full time?

Online productivity tools. No investments, profitable, linear but steady growth, minimal marketing, small team size, close to zero process. Works great for us programmers. And the CEO does a lot of programming as well, if I'd venture a guess I'd say about 40-50%.

I still can't imagine that this makes sense. Even if everyone is a developer on paper, you should be spending more time on all the other parts of running a company. CEO still writing code half of the time when everyone else is writing code all the time puts it over the edge. Don't you also need Designers, QA, Ops, Marketing, or CFO?

You might find it hard to imagine, but that's how it is. I can't say exactly how much time the CEO spends on other tasks out of office, but I know that he at least does a lot of coding while he's at the office (which is most of the time). As I said, we have a minimal amount of support issues and marketing. We also don't do meetings. We don't spend a ton of time on design, and when we do, everyone participates. But that's a very small amount of time compared to the time we spend writing (or thinking/talking about) code. QA is part of the coding process. CFO is outsourced/done by the CEO. The point is, all the developers except the CEO spends at least 90% of their time coding (in pairs).

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