I’ve been working in programming for a few years and I think I really dislike Pair Programming; I understand how it is but I often find it mind-numbingly dull. I have a feeling I’m doing it wrong but I feel like as a part of a dev team tasks should be broken into discrete enough chunks that a single person can just blitz through the work… Maybe it’s just me, what are y’all thoughts on the matter?
It’s a great tool for knowledge sharing, ramp up and debugging. Definitely not something that needs to happen on every story. Stuck on something or working on a weird bug? Get someone on a call and walk them through it. New team member or old susbsytem not many people understand? Pair the less knowledgeable person up with an SME for the first couple tasks so they can pick the SME’s brain while they work and get valuable context that might be lost in code or the story description.
It also doesn’t need to drag on. I find 30 minutes is best because as you approach an hour+ attention is hard to maintain. Get on the same page, learn a few things and once your making progress move to async communication.
Pair programming is a tool and only valuable if you know how and when to use it.