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Comment by drenvuk | Hacker News Reader

This guy is blind to the possible styles and mindsets of other programmers.

"Pair programming is the joy of working with an extra brain and another pair of eyes, where the key is to build a context where you two share the same goal in order to find the best possible solution."

Like hell it is.

The compiler is my teacher. The linter is my second pair of eyes. The performance benchmark is the guide that nudges me in the right direction.

If you need another person to help you program you're useless. If you need the internet to program you're similarly useless. If you can't code in a tent miles away from the nearest internet connection or other human you should go off and practice yourself.

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This is a reasonable position to take, except the last paragraph is phrased too carelessly.

Somebody who really cannot do any programming at all without a second person probably really is useless as a programmer, but most people will likely interpret what you wrote differently and take offense because of that.

> If you need the internet to program you're similarly useless.

This seriously depends on the complexity of the task, the software you're using, how good your memory is and how confident you're in what you write.

Let's say you're using an API of a third party solution... you need Internet.

Let's say you're using a new framework/plugin you need to read documentation for it (and yes, you can download it, but then you incur the risk of it being outdated or missing something...).

There's so many other instances where you need the Internet if you want to end up writing good code. There's also instances you don't... but yeah in the long run you do need the Internet / live documentation / ability to search for bugs, problems and troubleshoot with "latest" information available as oppose to the 10month dusty documentation PDF you got sitting on your machine.

1. Of course you need the internet if you're hitting an api but the docs will get you to the point you can test it yourself without internet access by mocking their services.

2. If you're using a new framework or plugin you should have the source available in addition to the documentation. That should tell you all you need. 10 month "dusty" documentation means you're working with unstable code. If you don't have the source to inspect then you have other issues, the first being the proprietary code inflicted mess that you have to deal with.

3. You can download the stackoverflow databases of the topics you deem important and search through them.

My bet is that you haven't really even tried.

To be honest you just seem to be coming up with impractical/unrealistic and idealistic counter arguments.

Does anyone really go to that much effort just so they can be offline?

Don't get me wrong, if I was going to a remote place without internet and needed to do some coding there, your suggestions make sense, even though I think there are pitfalls to that approach as then you're working off "static data/comments,etc" which might require further context or more recent context, which you'll need the Internet for.

How is mocking services impractical? You have to do it anyway for tests.

How is having their source code impractical? You should have downloaded it anyway.

The only one that might seem extreme is downloading the SO dbs. I have done this because I stay offline so I can better focus. Not everyone (probably very few) will reach that point.

I think you're overblowing how recent the information you require is tbh. You can get a lot done with months old information.

We do a bit of pair programming and pair reviewing from time to time.

It’s helpful for quick knowledge transfer: Reading and understanding code is much more efficient when the author walks you through it and explains some decisions on the spot.

Also helpful for review: a different set of eyes can sometimes catch design/logic inconsistencies much quicker than yourself or any tool.

It’s not that we can’t code ourselves. Pair programming and review is another _thing_ entirely that has unique and useful applications.

Haha! Don't forget the famous (although slightly apocryphal) :

- "If you need a visual editor to program you are certainly stupid" (~ Ken Thompson)

- "If you need a computer to enter your program into, you are not really a computer scientist" (~ E.W. Dijkstra)

lmao you mad?

A bit, yes.

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