
Why Every Startup Should Pair Program - jkopelman
http://firstround.com/article/Why-Every-Startup-Should-Pair-Program
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michaelwww
"Software development is really about people and is a social activity." That's
news to me. I thought software development was long periods of quiet
concentration while attempting to keep a program in one's head.

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usea
_> Machines should be communal_

How do I configure things sufficiently? Color schemes, hotkeys, layouts, UI
configurations, etc. I have about 40 hotkeys via an AutoHotkey script and
innumerable changes to my OS that make me more productive. When I sit at
somebody else's computer I feel like I'm swimming through molasses. How is
this resolved?

Also, what if you have a few coworkers with severe attitude and/or competency
issues? I can't imagine pair programming would be an improvement from simply
avoiding them.

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jasonwocky
To the first, these things tend to spread throughout the team over time, so by
the end everybody will be using those 40 hotkeys if they're indeed helpful. If
some people like them and others don't, they'll figure out how to resolve the
difference with the least possible amount of fuss. With regard to color
schemes, I've never seen a dispute over those, personally. People may come to
the table with different preferences, but over time those also resolve one way
or another.

In my experience, severe competency issues are actually /better/ dealt with
via pair programming than the alternative: pairing forces their competency
issues to the surface, and can be dealt with more easily. Personality
conflicts can be worked through, or the team can be changed up. When things
like that don't work out, the worst thing you can do is make too big a deal
out of it...reconfigure the team one way or another and move on.

~~~
usea
Thanks for the honest reply. I really appreciate it.

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TheCoelacanth
Just that picture of their office alone would put me off from ever working
there. The level of distractions must be horrible.

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jpalermo
I've worked there for 5 years. The office does seem loud when walking through
it, but not once have I felt that the noise interrupted me.

Now, that may not be true for everyone, but we hire new people all the time,
and I've never heard anyone raise it as a complaint (although I have seen many
comments like yours over the years from people who have seen pictures of our
office).

A big reason why I think people don't get distracted is the pairing. Pairs do
a good job of keeping each other focused.

~~~
michaelwww
From your site "As developers, we generally like to work across Ruby on Rails,
JavaScript, iOS & Android" Pair programming probably works when you are
hooking things up with glue code for the most part, that's my best guess.
That's the only case where I could see it working for me and it would probably
be kind of fun and interesting. I can't imagine doing anything that required a
lot of sustained concentration however, unless your engineers are doing that
when they get home from work and find some quiet time (probably.)

