5 ms·

Yea that never made sense to me. I think and solve problems as I code, and having someone yapping while I'm trying to do that is a great way to disrupt my think

by docmars 1mo ago

Yea that never made sense to me. I think and solve problems as I code, and having someone yapping while I'm trying to do that is a great way to disrupt my thinking process.

worthless-trash 1mo ago
In my limited experience, the 'pairness' part of pair programming , is best done in silence. The discussion / planning happens up front, the keyboard person does the implementation and the second person doesn't 'backseat drive', but thinks about test cases (writes it down), thinks about weaknesses (writes it down) and writes documentation while the code is written. All of these are reviewed before commit. The 'interrupting' while coding is the shitty part (I agree with you), not having someone working with you.
- docmars 1mo ago
  I don't really see how this provides any benefit over pairing asynchronously, pinging with questions or updates on what's shifted, sharing pull requests, requesting comments, etc. This process respects each other's time and allows each person to visit the relevant pieces without interruption. The common rebuttal to this is "Slack messages are too interrupting!" and my response is: ignore the message until you're in a good spot to address it, or if you can't spend meaningful time on it yet, just reply with an "I'll check this out later, thanks!" The idea that we have to sit on a video call in silence while losing the ability to think and write privately is such a huge distraction. Half of my mental bandwidth is occupied with self-consciousness of being "watched", or if I have my video off, it's the idea of being present and tied down by simply being there. As someone with ADHD, those circumstances do not mix and eliminate any possibility of being productive because it's too distracting on all fronts. Not to mention, I need intense music to really get in a flow state. You might be surprised by how many engineers feel this way because they similarly experience neurodivergent realities around this.
zeryx 1mo ago
You might be working on much smaller and well constrained problems, pair programming works well when the problem is unconstrained with many complex and interconnected layees
- VorpalWay 1mo ago
  Maybe it does for you, but everyone is different. It is annoying (and sad) to see both sides asserting their experiences as universal truths. I cannot stand pair programming, but I don't begrudge that it might work for some.
  - dd8601fn 1mo ago
    And for some of us it works great… sometimes. Like, not as a rule. There are times when it would be helpful to have my trusted coworker helping to work through something. The answers aren’t all obvious and we don’t know exactly how it’s going to go. We’ll feel it out as we go. He has better instincts for some stuff and I have better ones for others. We’ll get there better and faster pairing. But most of the time we have our own stuff to do and have our respective things well in hand. Then there’s no reason to force a pair programming situation.

by docmars 1mo ago

Yea that never made sense to me. I think and solve problems as I code, and having someone yapping while I'm trying to do that is a great way to disrupt my thinking process.

worthless-trash 1mo ago

In my limited experience, the 'pairness' part of pair programming , is best done in silence. The discussion / planning happens up front, the keyboard person does the implementation and the second person doesn't 'backseat drive', but thinks about test cases (writes it down), thinks about weaknesses (writes it down) and writes documentation while the code is written. All of these are reviewed before commit. The 'interrupting' while coding is the shitty part (I agree with you), not having someone working with you.

docmars 1mo ago
I don't really see how this provides any benefit over pairing asynchronously, pinging with questions or updates on what's shifted, sharing pull requests, requesting comments, etc. This process respects each other's time and allows each person to visit the relevant pieces without interruption. The common rebuttal to this is "Slack messages are too interrupting!" and my response is: ignore the message until you're in a good spot to address it, or if you can't spend meaningful time on it yet, just reply with an "I'll check this out later, thanks!" The idea that we have to sit on a video call in silence while losing the ability to think and write privately is such a huge distraction. Half of my mental bandwidth is occupied with self-consciousness of being "watched", or if I have my video off, it's the idea of being present and tied down by simply being there. As someone with ADHD, those circumstances do not mix and eliminate any possibility of being productive because it's too distracting on all fronts. Not to mention, I need intense music to really get in a flow state. You might be surprised by how many engineers feel this way because they similarly experience neurodivergent realities around this.

zeryx 1mo ago

You might be working on much smaller and well constrained problems, pair programming works well when the problem is unconstrained with many complex and interconnected layees

VorpalWay 1mo ago
Maybe it does for you, but everyone is different. It is annoying (and sad) to see both sides asserting their experiences as universal truths. I cannot stand pair programming, but I don't begrudge that it might work for some.
- dd8601fn 1mo ago
  And for some of us it works great… sometimes. Like, not as a rule. There are times when it would be helpful to have my trusted coworker helping to work through something. The answers aren’t all obvious and we don’t know exactly how it’s going to go. We’ll feel it out as we go. He has better instincts for some stuff and I have better ones for others. We’ll get there better and faster pairing. But most of the time we have our own stuff to do and have our respective things well in hand. Then there’s no reason to force a pair programming situation.