Best practices
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I think the practice was brought about by Junior programmers looking over the shoulder of Senior programmers. Then they swap positions and let the Junior programmer have go, under the watchful eye of the senior programmer. The probably developed a sucessful app, and it became practice.
ednrgc wrote:
I think the practice was brought about by Junior programmers looking over the shoulder of Senior programmers.
But it's not billed as a mentoring method. It's being sold as two peers writing the same code.
The evolution of the human genome is too important to be left to chance.
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I think pair programming would come in handing during debugging, short code bursts and complex code, but for just plain generic coding, I think it would be overkill.
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A lot of value comes from interacting with your peers on tricky things. If you stick your nose only in your code and never look up, you're going to miss learning a lot. And, yes, for very specific things it might be helpful if you're both sitting at the same computer. I agree that for 99% of the time it's vast overkill if you have competent people.
The evolution of the human genome is too important to be left to chance.
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Colin Angus Mackay wrote:
Someone has been working on part of a project and someone else needs to know what's what in order to integrate their code.
I haven't seen pair programming characterized this way. However, if you need to integrate your code with mine, my code should be documented and written so you should be able to understand it. If it isn't, that's the main problem. If you have specific problems or questions as to how to do your integration, come to me and we can discuss it but don't make me sit there for hours watching you fumble with the keyboard. (Assuming you type like most of the programmers I've seen. ;P )
The evolution of the human genome is too important to be left to chance.
Tim Craig wrote:
However, if you need to integrate your code with mine, my code should be documented and written so you should be able to understand it.
If you look at the forums you will see that a lot of developers don't even read the documentation for the framework they are working with. I don't see how they are going to read in-house documentation which probably hasn't been through the same review process and is often written by someone who would rather get back to coding. You could look at it another way, which is short term mentoring.
Upcoming Scottish Developers events: * Glasgow: Tell us what you want to see in 2007 My: Website | Blog | Photos
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Tim Craig wrote:
However, if you need to integrate your code with mine, my code should be documented and written so you should be able to understand it.
If you look at the forums you will see that a lot of developers don't even read the documentation for the framework they are working with. I don't see how they are going to read in-house documentation which probably hasn't been through the same review process and is often written by someone who would rather get back to coding. You could look at it another way, which is short term mentoring.
Upcoming Scottish Developers events: * Glasgow: Tell us what you want to see in 2007 My: Website | Blog | Photos
Colin Angus Mackay wrote:
If you look at the forums you will see that a lot of developers don't even read the documentation for the framework they are working with.
So the solution is to include one of the developers in the box to explain it to them? ;P
Colin Angus Mackay wrote:
I don't see how they are going to read in-house documentation which probably hasn't been through the same review process and is often written by someone who would rather get back to coding.
Well, now you've hit the real problem. Most developers are willing to put out the effort to practice their profession properly. Is it better to spend half a day properly documenting something or half a day spoon feeding every idiot who wants to use it. And, oh by the way, when that developer leaves because he smells a better opportunity across the road, who's going to explain it to the masses?
The evolution of the human genome is too important to be left to chance.
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Colin Angus Mackay wrote:
If you look at the forums you will see that a lot of developers don't even read the documentation for the framework they are working with.
So the solution is to include one of the developers in the box to explain it to them? ;P
Colin Angus Mackay wrote:
I don't see how they are going to read in-house documentation which probably hasn't been through the same review process and is often written by someone who would rather get back to coding.
Well, now you've hit the real problem. Most developers are willing to put out the effort to practice their profession properly. Is it better to spend half a day properly documenting something or half a day spoon feeding every idiot who wants to use it. And, oh by the way, when that developer leaves because he smells a better opportunity across the road, who's going to explain it to the masses?
The evolution of the human genome is too important to be left to chance.
Tim Craig wrote:
And, oh by the way, when that developer leaves because he smells a better opportunity across the road, who's going to explain it to the masses?
The idea is that the masses already know by that point becuase they've sat through it.
Upcoming Scottish Developers events: * Glasgow: Tell us what you want to see in 2007 My: Website | Blog | Photos
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Tim Craig wrote:
And, oh by the way, when that developer leaves because he smells a better opportunity across the road, who's going to explain it to the masses?
The idea is that the masses already know by that point becuase they've sat through it.
Upcoming Scottish Developers events: * Glasgow: Tell us what you want to see in 2007 My: Website | Blog | Photos
Colin Angus Mackay wrote:
The idea is that the masses already know by that point becuase they've sat through it.
So the information trickles down by word of mouth from generation to generation. With bits lost and modified with each telling. And pretty soon we have a ..... religion. :doh:
The evolution of the human genome is too important to be left to chance.