eXtreme .NET: Introducing eXtreme Programming Techniques to .NET Developers [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Chapter 2. Pair Programming

This is a chapter for you Chapter 1, pair programming is the practice of developing all production code with two developers sitting at one machine. This goal of this practice is for developers to help each other create something far greater than one developer alone could do alone.

Pair programming may be the hardest of the XP techniques. It certainly raises the most concern among the software development community. As software developers, we are typically taught to program on our own. I expect that (like myself), the self-taught programmers have spent many hours on their own, playing with code and working out how to make some software do something. Even the education system tends not to encourage software to be developed by groups or teams, measuring success by the work of an individual.

However, as an average individual (which, of course, you and I are not!), my IQ is around 100. Surely if I work with someone else who is also average, our combinedIQ should be somewhat higher. It is unlikely that we can get close to 200 because much of our intelligence overlaps, but hopefully we could get to 130 or more. In Software for Your Head^[1], the McCarthys explain the idea of a team IQ, with each member of the team contributing to the overall IQ of a team. Pair programming relies on the same premise, and the team size is two for the coding task being developed.