Working Together
Aug. 29th, 2003 09:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewduckerOne of the tenets of the ridiculously named "Extreme Programming" (a better name being "Agile Programming" of which I believe Extreme Programming is a subset) is Pair Programming, the idea being that two programmers working together are far more effective than two programmers working on their own code.
I'm not 100% convinced that this is necessarily true for actual programming, although I'd like to give it a try. I am now 100% convinced that this is true for all the admin faffy stuff that surrounds it. When you have to go through 20 tables and check the data structures, or compare two different sets of information, having one person call out figures while the other person checks them is a vast improvement. Not only is it faster because one person doesn't have to keep track of their position on both screen and paper (or even worse, switching between two applications), but it's actually motivational, because your attention is constantly engaged by the other person. It's one thing to be engaged by the work you're doing, but for things which don't interest me, try as I might I can't manage extended focus - having someone else waiting on the next figure to be read to them makes a huge difference to the enthusiasm and speed with which it's found.
Anyone out there got experience with working closely with other people in this kind of situation?
I'm not 100% convinced that this is necessarily true for actual programming, although I'd like to give it a try. I am now 100% convinced that this is true for all the admin faffy stuff that surrounds it. When you have to go through 20 tables and check the data structures, or compare two different sets of information, having one person call out figures while the other person checks them is a vast improvement. Not only is it faster because one person doesn't have to keep track of their position on both screen and paper (or even worse, switching between two applications), but it's actually motivational, because your attention is constantly engaged by the other person. It's one thing to be engaged by the work you're doing, but for things which don't interest me, try as I might I can't manage extended focus - having someone else waiting on the next figure to be read to them makes a huge difference to the enthusiasm and speed with which it's found.
Anyone out there got experience with working closely with other people in this kind of situation?
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Date: 2003-08-29 02:06 pm (UTC)"Man - i live for this stuff"
(from the modern classic, XXX)
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Date: 2003-08-29 02:09 pm (UTC)