The Art of Agile Development, 2nd Edition

Pair Programming

AUDIENCE

Developers, Whole Team

We help each other succeed.

Do you want somebody to watch over your shoulder all day? Do you want to waste half your time sitting in sullen silence watching somebody else code?

Of course not. Luckily, that’s not how pair programming works.

Pair programming involves two people working at the same computer, at the same time, on the same thing. It’s one of the most controversial Agile ideas. Two people working at the same computer? It’s weird. It’s also extremely powerful and, once you get used to it, tons of fun. Most programmers I know who tried pairing for a month found that they preferred it to programming alone.

More importantly, pair programming is one of the most effective ways to achieve collective code ownership and truly collaborate on code as a team.

Why Pair?

There’s more to pairing than sharing knowledge. Pairing also improves the quality of your results. That’s because pair programming doubles your brainpower.

When you pair, one person is the driver. Their job is to code. The other person is the navigator. Their job is to think. As navigator, sometimes you think about what the driver is typing. (Don’t rush to point out missing semicolons, though. That’s annoying.) Sometimes you think about what comes next. Sometimes you think about how your work best fits into the overall design.

This arrangement leaves the driver free to work on the tactical challenges of creating rigorous, syntactically correct code without worrying ...