I’ve been working in programming for a few years and I think I really dislike Pair Programming; I understand how it is but I often find it mind-numbingly dull. I have a feeling I’m doing it wrong but I feel like as a part of a dev team tasks should be broken into discrete enough chunks that a single person can just blitz through the work… Maybe it’s just me, what are y’all thoughts on the matter?
I’ve always felt that pair programming is more useful on early stages of a task, where there is enough doubt about implementation details and discussing them is worth.
This way it felt more of a meeting between two persons discussing details first, while testing them live to check if we were on track second, instead of programming first and discussing second.
By the time we stand on the screen without talking too much we just stepped aside and separate the task if needed.
Any other kind of forced pair programming feels wrong, either because the task was already planned enough to no create enough discussion, or because it was small enough and the discussion was not worth. I’ve found myself on situations where “we needed” to make a task in pair programming and was dull as you say.
Is pair programming the right way to address unknowns around implementation? It seems like a brainstorming / whiteboarding session might be a better fit.
More like unknowns about implementation details. Defining in brainstorming sessions how we want a solution makes sense, but I don’t imagine talking about details.
I was referring more about discussing the details inside of an already defined solution, like, for example, trying to use a library, which one we use, or how would be implemented in detail something.