Pair Programming
By Brendan Enrick and Steve Smith
Course info
Course info
Description
Programming alongside another person--also known as pair programming--is a concept that most developers have heard of, but may not have seen in action. This technique can greatly improve the quality and readability of your code as well as increase knowledge-sharing. In this course, Pair Programming, you'll learn how to achieve success in programming alongside others. You'll start by learning about the different roles of pairing, when and when not to use paired programming, and several pairing techniques. From there, you'll go over research that describes the benefits of this practice and learn about a similar technique called mob programming. Finally, you'll discover how you can set up your workspace for success and how to do pair programming remotely. By the end of this course, you will know the proper techniques and benefits of pair programming, and you'll be able to use it to your advantage to create better code.
About the author
Brendan Enrick is an experienced software architect, focusing a great deal of his time on agile and software craftsmanship methodologies. Brendan is a strong proponent of strong development communities. Along with two other community members, Brendan helped found the Hudson Software Craftsmanship user group in 2009.
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About the author
Steve Smith (@ardalis) is an entrepreneur and software developer with a passion for building quality software as effectively as possible.
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Transcript
Hello! This is Brendan Enrick and I’m Steve Smith. We have been proponents of agile practices for many years, and have worked at a number of companies where we’ve seen their benefits.
One of the most effective practices teams can use to improve their communication and code quality is pair programming. We have led dozens of workshops and user group meetings teaching developers how to improve their skills, covering pair programming and other professional development practices.
We’re excited to share our experience in pair programming with you. In our new Pluralsight course, you’ll learn the benefits of pair programming, and when it makes sense to apply this technique. You may be surprised to find out that you already use pairing at times, and that other professions also benefit from this practice.
In this course, you’ll see how pair programming works in action. We’ll demonstrate a few different techniques you can use to make sure both partners stay engaged and effective while pairing.
You’ll learn the results of a number of studies on the practice of pair programming, and how you can best apply this technique based on the characteristics of your team and the kind of software you’re building. These studies can also help you estimate the costs and benefits of pair programming to your organization.
In addition to basic pairing techniques, we also cover mob programming, which takes pairing to the next level for your whole team.
One thing that can really make or break pair programming is your work environment. The right furniture, room layout, and workstation setup makes a huge difference. Some teams don’t have the benefit of being in the same room, but can still use pair programming. You’ll see some of the tools available today that enable effective pair programming for distributed teams.
We hope you’ll join us in learning an important professional software development skill with the pair programming course on Pluralsight.