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Comment by neor | Hacker News Reader

I don't agree, pair/mob programming has its benefits.

In the early stage of starting a project you need to set up the structure of the application you are going to build. The architecture, and rough outline of where what needs to go.

By using mob programming we've been able to get an entire team ready to go at full speed in no time. Everyone knew the thought behind every decision made, and everyone had enough knowledge of the structure to hit the ground running.

That is way better than having the lead dev or architect do that work on his own and then having to spend time to explain it all to the rest of the team.

Mob programming has its advantages, but I wouldn't want to use it too often.

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So what's the difference between that and gathering around a whiteboard and doing some design/planning work?

The difference is it has a name, so consulting and training can be sold and conference talks can be made.

To me personally; not much.

The main difference is walking out of the room with a pull-request setting up the structure in code instead of walking out the room with a photo made of a whiteboard.

I find that starting new projects with multiple people right away is almost always a recipe for disaster, or at least drastically reduces the potential quality of the project before even writing the first line of code.

Maybe it works for small projects or teams of mostly junior developers. But for anything remotely complex I can say from experience the architecture won't be ready in a few meetings but rather after much hammock time.

That architecture will then become a main factor in your productivity, maintainability and performance. These 3 are very, very hard to optimize for once the architecture is in place.

Other than for code reviews or mentoring junior developers, I've never seen pair/mob programming works with quality results. Its nearly impossible to solve complex problems when outside the zone, and its nearly impossible to get in the zone in a pair/mob setting.

I think at least the zone part depends on personality. I have a much easier time getting in the zone when pairing and riding off each other's ideas.

That makes it sound like the whiteboard session is much better. Cause there's planning involved, instead of just throwing some code together.

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