The Pair Programming Show
Published January 20th, 2010 Under Coding | Leave a Comment
Did you try pair programming but it didn’t work? Are you wondering if it’s worth it? In this live play you’ll follow a team as they go through stages and struggles of learning pair programming. You’ll see anti-patterns in practice so you can recognize them, and you’ll learn the small subtle things that is the difference between wasting time and a high productivity. Get the popcorn ready and open your mind. Pair programming can be a big boost – if it’s done right
Watch this video on Oredev.org
Edgecase Dialog: Ruby Code Review
Published January 14th, 2010 Under Coding, Software Testing | Leave a Comment
Sit in like a fly on the wall, while Jim Weirich and Joe O’Brien walk through a code review. The team has uncovered some very typical issues that can arise in Ruby projects. The code review is presented in three acts. Act I is a review of a typical rails application. Having added some testing and followed the typical restful conventions, this application seems pretty solid on the foundation. As Jim and Joe demonstrate, however, the application has some areas of concern. Act II is a code review for an open source gem. The team demonstrates some critical mistakes that library writers usually make and show ways in which the code could be written in order to play nicer in the open source ecosystem. Act III is all about strategy. Now that we have identified the areas that need to be worked on, how do we go about getting there. It’s unrealistic to stop all development and rewrite the two projects. The team helps the client figure out a game plan that allows them to continue moving forward.
http://scotland-on-rails.s3.amazonaws.com/2A08_JoeOBrianJimWeirich-SOR.mp4
Pairing 101
Published November 16th, 2009 Under Coding | Leave a Comment
Pairing 101 aims to introduce what kind of activities are good for pairing and which aren’t. It will also try to explain how you can develop your skills and also explain how to be an absolutely atrocious pair.
http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/java-jee/pairing-101
Debugging Pair Programming
Published October 1st, 2009 Under General | Leave a Comment
The session is aimed at leaders in teams who are transitioning to agile / XP and are struggling to adopt pair programming. It helps participants to discover and understand the complex social factors that inhibit healthy collaboration in their teams, and to figure actions they can take to address them. I think Pair Programming is vital to the success of a programming team, but every time I join a new team I seem to find I’m in a minority of people who feel that way, let alone have any experience of actually doing it. This is not a session about convincing a manager that it’s a good idea: let’s assume he or she trusts you to do whatever is right for the project. This is about exploring, understanding and ultimately tackling the hidden influences which inhibit your peers from coming out of their caves and sharing their thoughts and ideas in regular, constructive, creative, pairing sessions.
http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/agile-scrum/debugging-pair-programming
Effective Pairing: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Published April 23rd, 2009 Under Coding, General, Open Source Tools | Leave a Comment
Pairing can be a highly effective practice that adds significant value to a project, or it can be a disaster whose cost far exceeds managers’ fears that they are just paying two people to do the work of one. In the worst case, you won’t get the work of one out of the two. They might even do damage that others have to clean up later. The challenge lies in the fact that working as a pair demands a level of attentiveness, collaboration, and continuous focus that working solo just doesn’t require. We want to demonstrate some of the behaviors that can undermine the value of pairing, solicit audience feedback about their own experiences and observations, and explain how and why pairing works or doesn’t work. This session was first presented at Agile 2008, where a group of four people rehearsed and acted out “bad pairing” scenarios. In this case, the scenarios have not been rehearsed. Participants in the session will be asked to come forward to act out scenarios with the facilitator. Participants may also suggest scenarios based on their own experiences. Together, we will discuss approaches to correcting the unproductive pairing behaviors.