Depends. If it’s with ICs, sure. But as soon as some manager or someone with a leadership position joins, then it’s just plain work. So I dislike chitchatting with such people.
I really don’t understand why some people are so against this as a language feature. I get that the community tries to stay away from “magic” but where is the line between magic and convenient syntactic sugar.
For example keyword lists as the last argument to a function don’t need brackets, and keyword lists are really lists of tuples where the first item is an atom. I feel like those two things are in some ways less obvious and more magical than this map shorthand.
Magic == “I don’t like it, but I want to sound more objective or rational than I really am”.
You’re definitely correct that there’s as good an argument that these implicit features you mention are “too magical” as there is the the “ES6” syntax is too magical.
That all-hands simulator is fantastic. We once worked together and have attended some of the same all-hands meetings. Your game is about as painful as the real thing, which makes it even more hilarious.
Don’t be so hard on yourself mate, you aren’t defined by your job or salary. We should try not to constantly compare ourselves to other people like this, there is always somebody better off or more successful.
Based on nothing but these two comments I’d much rather hang out with you than I would the commenter above you. So there’s one thing you win at.
I have worked in 100% pair programming environments for 5 years now, across 2 different employers. I feel like what you’ve just discribed is a good example of the beniefts of pair programming along with the downsides of not doing it all the time.
Your skin crawling while your pair is fumbling for buttons in the IDE is likely displayed by you physically as well, maybe holding your breath or twitching your hands towards the keyboard, your pair is probably then also thinking “what are they thinking but not saying, have I just done something really stupid” which leaves everybody feeling very uncomfortable, and is unproductive. However if people are comfortable with each other and importantly, open to being shown something new, the whole situation is fixed with a simple “hey, did you know there is a shortcut for that”. Over the weeks simple interactions like that add up to mean the whole team is using all of the keyboard shortcuts. The same is true of software patterns and useful library functions, they spread like gossip in the group because everyone is excited to show the next person.
I totally understand that pair programming isn’t for everybody in fact I think it is only for a specific type of person and group. Pair programming only works in groups where each member has high levels of empathy and trust is high within the group. Everybody on this thread that turned down pair programming jobs because they thought it sounded awful were definitely right to do so. But for some it can be an extreamly productive and fun way of working and learning at the same time.
