Pair Programming

I had the chance to do some pair programming this week and I thought I'd share my impressions. For those of you who may have just recovered from a recent coma, pair programming is a technique where two programmers collaborate on a piece of code using one keyboard and monitor. The person typing is called the driver, and the person observing is called the navigator.

I entered in to my pair programming arrangement as not exactly skeptical, but I wouldn't say I was convinced by all I had read. I'd need to spend some more time coding with a partner (or see some citations) before I'm prepared to accept everything the Pair Evangelicals claim. Regardless, I was just curious enough to give it a chance and see if it could work.

The thing that I noticed within the first hour was that having a navigator was much less of a distraction than I had feared. I was worried that it would devolve into an unproductive chat session, but that didn't happen. There was a bit of chit-chat now and then, but each time within a few minutes one of us would remind the other of the mountain of work we had to do. Having a partner wasn't a distraction at all, it actually kept me slightly more focused than normal.

Another thing that struck me fairly quickly was that having a second pair of eyes on my code while I was writing it kept me honest. I took fewer shortcuts, commented my code properly, tested more, and refactored more often. All of the things you're supposed to do even when no one is watching. It was like having a code review really early in the project.

When it was my turn to navigate I noticed something else. I think differently when I'm not the one typing in the code. Having my hands on the keyboard forces me into a very logical mode of thought where I'm worried about details. Observing someone else writing code allowed me to think at a higher level of abstraction. You may have experienced this yourself when you're designing on paper, at a whiteboard, or writing pseudocode. Not worrying about the details of what will make your code compile allows you to think more about design-level aspects of your software.

Overall I would rate my experience with pair programming as a success, but I don't think that it's strictly necessary. If you haven't tried it, I would recommend it for a few days just to see what it's like. It has been worth it for me just to note the difference in my own way of thinking when I'm away from the keyboard. This difference will likely cause me to take more frequent breaks from typing so I can spend time at the whiteboard thinking about my software from a different point of view, even when I'm coding solo.