Hacker News Reader

Comment by _zamorano_ | Hacker News Reader

I struggled badly on a pair programming position.

It's not like I don't like reviews or cannot work alongside another person. It's I cannot learn while someone is talking to me or trying to make me place the cursor somewhere.

I'm all in for code review, even in pairs. In fact, I do that with a junior dev I have assigned and it's working well for us. I leave him thinking and come back to evaluate his solution.

I find reviewing him paired, is time saving for me. I make him lead me to the right code spots, rather than finding out on my own. I fire 3 quick questions and we're aligned on the spot.

I'll never work again on a 100% pp position but I think I've found my sweet spot with the technique.

I agree that, if no other safeguards are in place, using pp you can avoid real bad code. But without deep thought, you'll mostly converge to an average solution, when social dynamics are very much leading.

View on HN

That's funny/sad.

I've never learned so much about programming as during my years pair programming!

I got to see how other people solved problems, and surprisingly often, they have a completely different approach than what I though was the obvious way. Half the time their way was better than mine, and I became a better programmer, and half the time I taught the other person something.

This went on day after day, for years!

There is a technique for pair programming well. I was lucky to join a team of PP pros, and picked it up pretty fast. Sounds like you had worse luck :(

> I cannot learn while someone is talking to me

This sounds strange. Normally people learn by listening to others talking, right?

I think that PP is generally talked about backwards. Everyone says that the least experienced programmer should drive while the senior programmer talks. When I was an intern 25+ years ago before pair programming had a name, I sat beside the grey beard who did the typing. I watched him and tried to keep up. For the first couple of weeks, I contributed nothing, but once I started to understand the code and his style, I was able to start seeing simple things, like reminding him to do a null pointer check, and then I started to see more and more stuff and I was able to contribute in real time.

I think this worked because 1) he was comfortable with me staring over his shoulder with neither of us talking and 2) I was comfortable with just watching an learning. I've tried this style with my junior programmers, and I'm too anxious being quiet and coding while someone watches me, and most juniors are also too anxious to prove that they're paying attention so they have to talk, and that breaks the flow.

Seems like your programming partner was particularly micromanagey. When I pair program it's more of a conversation to discover different approaches. If you're having to tell someone where to position the cursor, that's missing the point!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com