February 2010
Beginner
255 pages
6h 10m
English
Content preview from 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know
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Chapter 64. Pair Program and Feel the Flow
IMAGINE THAT YOU ARE TOTALLY ABSORBED by what you are doing—focused, dedicated, and involved. You may have lost track of time. You probably feel happy. You are experiencing flow. It is difficult to both achieve and maintain flow for a whole team of developers since there are so many interruptions, interactions, and other distractions that can easily break it.
If you have already practiced pair programming, you are probably familiar with how pairing contributes to flow. If you have not, we want to use our experiences to motivate you to start right now! To succeed with pair programming, both individual team members and the team as a whole have to put forth some effort.
As a team member, be patient with developers less experienced than you. Confront your fears about being intimidated by more skilled developers. Realize that people are different, and value it. Be aware of your own strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of other team members. You may be surprised by how much you can learn from your colleagues.
As a team, introduce pair programming to promote distribution of skills and knowledge throughout the project. You should solve your tasks in pairs and rotate pairs and tasks frequently. Agree upon a rule of rotation. Put the rule aside or adjust it when necessary. Our experience is that you do not necessarily need to complete ...