AoAD2 Practice: Pair Programming

This is an excerpt from The Art of Agile Development, Second Edition. Visit the Second Edition home page for additional excerpts and more!

This excerpt is copyright 2007, 2021 by James Shore and Shane Warden. Although you are welcome to share this link, do not distribute or republish the content without James Shore’s express written permission.

Pair Programming

Audience
Developers, Whole Team

We help each other succeed.

Do you want somebody to watch over your shoulder all day? Do you want to waste half your time sitting in sullen silence watching somebody else code?

Of course not. Luckily, that’s not how pair programming works.

Pair programming involves two people working at the same computer, at the same time, on the same thing. It’s one of the most controversial Agile ideas. Two people working at the same computer? It’s weird. It’s also extremely powerful and, once you get used to it, tons of fun. Most programmers I know who tried pairing for a month found that they preferred it to programming alone.

Ally
Collective Code Ownership

More importantly, pair programming is one of the most effective ways to achieve collective code ownership and truly collaborate on code as a team.

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In this Section

  1. Pair Programming
    1. Why Pair?
    2. Pairing Stations
    3. How to Pair
    4. Effective Navigating
    5. Teaching Through Pairing
    6. Challenges
      1. Comfort
      2. Introversion and social anxiety
      3. Communication style
      4. Tools and keybindings
    7. Questions
    8. Prerequisites
    9. Indicators
    10. Alternatives and Experiments
    11. Further Reading

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