Re: [extremeprogramming] Pairing styles

J. B. Rainsberger wrote on 10/29/19 8:25 AM:
> On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 2:20 PM Jeff Langr <[email protected] 
> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>
>     In 2003, I paired daily on a fairly strict XP team as a traveling
>     consultant at HEB in San Antonio. Well, not quite daily--many of
>     us did 9/80 (80 hours across 9 days) so that we could salvage more
>     weekend time with family. Most days stretched to 9 or 10 hours of
>     pairing as a result. I learned a lot about pairing during that
>     stint--much of it in the form of "what not to do." Such as: pair
>     for 9-10 hours straight.
>
>
> Ooh! Do tell more. :)
Many of these are obvious now, but here are some of the things I learned 
first-hand:
- novice-novice can be illuminating/valuable at times, but probably not 
a great idea as a regular habit
- switching mid-story is a great idea to get a 3rd set of eyes on the 
code before integrating
- pairing is a good way to help block distractions (observers tend to 
bother a heads-down pair a little less, plus it's easier to focus and 
ignore external noise when heads down)
- putting three separate teams in close proximity in a shared space is a 
bad idea
- a team of 17 doing pairing is way too large. I think Steve Gordon's 
advice is spot-on:
    "Where pairing can fall short is when neither partner is familiar 
with other parts of the code base that contain functionality similar to 
what is being worked on that could be refactored to reduce duplication 
and increase reuse.  This is why I advocate a periodic mob refactoring 
session to reduce duplication across the entire code base, even for 
teams that pair-program."
Wish I'd thought of this back in 2003. We went into a horrible period 
when we had to do massive reworking of the code for performance reasons, 
and it turned out that the code had not been getting refactored enough 
on a regular RGR basis. (Yes there was some obvious evidence; we--me + 
16 others--chose to not worry enough about it.)

>     Pairing helped keep me engaged and energized across such long
>     days, but it did pretty much wipe me out regularly. (I was 39 at
>     the time.) After HEB I started pushing no more than  5-6 hours of
>     pairing daily. I did near 8 hours remote pairing daily from
>     2013-2016, but found that I really wanted to be done after about
>     6-7 hours.
>
>
> How much of that, would you say, did the technology contribute to 
> draining your energy?
When you say "the technology" ...

I think it was just programming for such a long duration and using my 
brain for so many hours straight. Add that to the positive energy 
required to be a good pair.

Jeff



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