Red Squirrel Reflections Dave Hoover explores the psychology of software development

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Pair Programming Power
Friday, January 16, 2004

We're back into quasi-XP mode at work. This means we're pairing most of the time, working in iterations in an open workspace, with user stories, but [gulp] no testing.

I find myself to be less motivated at work lately, and yesterday was a particularly difficult day. I was exhausted and having trouble holding together the conceptual pieces of the sub-system my pair and I were developing. With this particular pair, I am usually the one coming up with ideas and making most of the design decisions. He balances me out by reminding me to keep it simple and offering corrections to the stupid mistakes I'm always making.

I was reaching my physical, emotional, and intellectual limits yesterday afternoon on a particularly nasty problem. I allowed myself to move back, to physically re-position my chair nearly behind my pair. I then let myself off the hook as the role of idea-generator and object-oriented-thinker. It was a relief, but it was a sort of resignation that we wouldn't be solving this problem anytime soon.

Five mintues later, my pair had generated a solution based on a problem he had encountered in a previous project. It was a thrill to see the development pace of our task stay steady (and even accelerate) in the face of changing roles.

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