Pair programming exhausts me. When I write code alone, I usually have breaks every 20 minutes or so. I go for a short walk after 1h. I look out of the window every now and then. Sometimes I put some background music. When I’m doin pair programming I’m supposed to: think out loud, look at the screen 100% of the time, sit in front of the screen for at least 1h straight. Think at the same speed than my peer.

Not worth it for me. Don’t care if we together are more productive; I couldn’t care less. I care more about my eye sight, and sitting routine.

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dalmo3 4 days ago | parent [-]

I can sit and program 16 hours straight without breaks.

I cannot talk to someone else for an hour without feeling exhausted and needing a long break afterwards.

Talking to someone else while programming? It's revving up my brain into the red zone. Sometimes the adrenaline boost does its job but I do pay the price.

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jack_riminton 4 days ago | parent [-]

Same. It seems the coding part of my brain and the communicating are mutually exclusive

I wonder if it’s related to the phenomena of some people having a ‘narrator’ in their head or, like me, there’s no voice and it takes effort to convert abstract thoughts to sentences

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exe34 4 days ago | parent [-]

no I have the voice but I can either explain or do, not both.

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karmakaze 4 days ago | parent [-]

Maybe this is a misconception or misrepresentation of pair-programming, at least compared to my experience. One person isn't supposed to be doing both. You're either navigating/explaining or driving/doing. Pair programming isn't about one person doing everything and another person watching and trying to keep up. It's about communicating and sharing an understanding, like a realtime/interactive PR description/review while writing. Of course there are times where one person will simply say "let me write this out and discuss after" and go at it for a short while, but it should be the exception rather than the rule in settings where it worked best for me.

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bluecheese452 4 days ago | parent [-]

This feels a bit no true scotsman.

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karmakaze 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Perhaps it is, but I'm not really going to entertain someone saying they tried it and it didn't work, when all they did was work their own screens/keyboards sitting side-by-side (or remote) each with their own ideas and not really sharing in the process, except to interrupt and annoy each other.

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exe34 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

no I actually get it, I think like most fads, it seems to work great for really trivial things or for debugging. I have myself used pair programming in those cases.

I just can't imagine using it for serious work. navigating/explaining? I know neither the science I'm trying to code nor the code I'm trying to write - I'll write code to explore the data, I'll have a hunch, I'll wonder about something and I'll go find that one paper I came across 10 years ago to check - I don't see what code the other would be writing while I'm trying to figure that stuff out.

I'm sure it works great for yet another CRUD.

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	▲	karmakaze 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Totally agree. I wouldn't say it's well suited for research or research-heavy work. In those cases, I'll do research on my own and reconvene later or another day.