ThiloFor months, a coworker had been bringing up #PairProgramming at our sprint retrospectives, so we tried it out this sprint.
So far, it is fun and also efficient/productive.
On the tooling side, we are not using any special #PairProgramming software yet, and I have a hunch that we won't.
You can get very far with very little friction with just screen sharing over a #Slack huddle. We can talk to each-other, both see what the "driver" is seeing, we cannot type into the editor at the same time, but the "watcher" can draw on the screen.
Victor von Void@thilo we've tried that some years back. It turned out, that the overall productivity dropped significantly. Often one of the partners spaced out after a few minutes, lost concentration and got bored. Also people have different working modes, some think more broad, others have a depth first approach, some need more breaks than others etc. It's hard to find compatible partners.
Let's just say that over all neither code quality nor productivity increased. It didn't make sense for us to continue.
Let's just say that over all neither code quality nor productivity increased. It didn't make sense for us to continue.
@vvv I can totally see that. I can attest that it is a lot more tiring than my normal workstyle. And I have to actively force myself to shut down all "distractions". Which may not be sustainable full-time in the long run.
I think it can work, but only in moderation, with some form of rotation with "normal work". And only for tasks that benefit from having two minds bouncing off ideas in real-time. Because that is where I see the efficiency. More and faster code review, design discussions etc.