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Comment by ryukoposting | Hacker News Reader

I've worked at companies with 20 employees, and companies with 100,000 employees, and not once have I ever been asked to participate in pair programming. It would have been immensely useful in college, but VS Code already has a built-in tool that would do the job... and VS Code works on operating systems that I actually use.

Who is using this? What do you use it for? I don't mean to be facetious, I have just never been exposed to pair programming in a professional space.

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They are excellent for mentoring. As a remote senior engineer I'm not able to simply stand over someones shoulder but I can offer to drop into a peer programming session and help someone through a problem and be able to take the keyboard and show them different approaches etc. Without these tools I don't think I could do my job effectively.

Same! I also find I learn all kinds of new tricks from jr and sr devs alike. Pairing is programming with the cheat codes on.

Mentoring! That makes sense, and depending on where you work, the obvious "mac only" limitation isn't a big deal. Thanks for the insight!

I have worked in FAANG and in 10 person startups and have paired in them all. VSCode is fine if you're all using VSCode and don't need to screen share anything outside of VSCode. If everyone is on mac though, there is nothing better than Tuple that I have used. If one party uses IntelliJ and another uses vim, and you need to have a db client or browser or something open as well, Tuple is fantastic.

There are plenty of programmers that don't/can't use VS Code, for one. I'm an iOS and Mac developer, so VS Code is of little use. I'm in Xcode all day. Tuple makes it so I can pair with Xcode, but also see/use the iOS simulator over the pairing connection.

That's strangely the opposite of my experience. I think you have to work at a company that values engineering culture. Also, you could suggest it.

Pair programming isn't inherent to good engineering culture. I would say that my employers have had phenomenal engineering culture, and the first couple had the best mentorship experiences I could have ever asked for.

Have you practiced it extensively though? You said you haven't professionally, so that leaves just personal experience. I would say it's not entirely critical, but I'd be very skeptical about a company's engineering if they didn't pair program. It would make me look closely at their other practices or lack of

I very much get a cargo-cult vibe from this statement.

In a 30-year career, I’ve pair-programmed under 100 times. Usually to get someone up to speed on a confusing part of the code base.

In fact, I’d go as far as to say that if pair programming is a recurrent need, you need one or more of better engineers, better documentation, or better code reviews.

Thanks for the N=1. In my 5 year career I've pair programmed across the spectrum of experience roughly 500 times.

I don't see it as only as a need to unblock someone. It's a great way learn and share from in a junior:senior dynamic, and also speaking strictly remotely, a nice way to socialize

You've correctly identified why Windows isn't worth their time.

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