I’m the type of programmer who likes to shut themselves away from the works in silence while I work.
However one of the most successful complex fault tolerant distributed systems projects I ever worked on was done in a team of myself and one other guy, delivered in about 9 months from start to finish, is still, as far as I’m aware, running flawlessly years later and was developed through 100% pair programming.
We did it be css use as a team of two it was important that both of us were intimately familiar with every line of code and understood every decision made, but it turned out to be an incredibly effective way of developing complex software.
Some things to note: you have to get on very well with the other person, or it’s going to be frustrating. You have to have similar standards and ideals or you will clash and fight. It’s an exhausting way to work and you will need to take regular breaks. You need to be strict about the roles and about swapping roles regularly. We did a lot of remote pair programming (voice call + screen share that allows input from both: we used screenhero when it was still a thing, VSCode has shared editor support nowadays that’s not bad, not sure what other tools there are)
Other people mentioned ADHD, I too have ADHD and this definitely isn’t my natural way of working. I even had some resistance to it most mornings and had to tell myself ok let’s go. And it IS exhausting, you need a lot of regular breaks, you need to be able to shut off and not think about work at all after hours or at weekends, it is a very tiring way to work.
But DAMN was it effective. I don’t think we could have delivered it in 9 months, let alone without known bugs, any other way. We would not have both had the same level of understanding of the entire system.
However one of the most successful complex fault tolerant distributed systems projects I ever worked on was done in a team of myself and one other guy, delivered in about 9 months from start to finish, is still, as far as I’m aware, running flawlessly years later and was developed through 100% pair programming.
We did it be css use as a team of two it was important that both of us were intimately familiar with every line of code and understood every decision made, but it turned out to be an incredibly effective way of developing complex software.
Some things to note: you have to get on very well with the other person, or it’s going to be frustrating. You have to have similar standards and ideals or you will clash and fight. It’s an exhausting way to work and you will need to take regular breaks. You need to be strict about the roles and about swapping roles regularly. We did a lot of remote pair programming (voice call + screen share that allows input from both: we used screenhero when it was still a thing, VSCode has shared editor support nowadays that’s not bad, not sure what other tools there are)
Other people mentioned ADHD, I too have ADHD and this definitely isn’t my natural way of working. I even had some resistance to it most mornings and had to tell myself ok let’s go. And it IS exhausting, you need a lot of regular breaks, you need to be able to shut off and not think about work at all after hours or at weekends, it is a very tiring way to work.
But DAMN was it effective. I don’t think we could have delivered it in 9 months, let alone without known bugs, any other way. We would not have both had the same level of understanding of the entire system.