quote:Original post by morebeer
it''s psychologically dangerous, because there are 2 types of people

You''d make a great psychologist, I bet!

I did pair programming with my friend and it worked fine. The one who wasn''t typing usually spent more time thinking of what to do next. Or occasionally gave suggestions about code style or about breaking some functions into smaller ones. The resulting code was something we both understood well, and I think doing it with another person increased the likelyhood that others would understand it as well. I can say with certanity that neither of us could''ve made the code as good by working alone. It was also very fun, but not so productive at times (we occasionally ended up joking or talking about something completely unrelated). On the other hand, had I worked alone, I would''ve been more tempted to stop what I''m doing every once in a while and come to Gamedev to post something useless. Having the other fellow there didn''t give me the chance.

Two heads are better than one.

I have had mostly success with pairwise programming. Though I do agree with some of the combinations presented in the first post, some I do not. The last one about two extroverted programmers is definitely true. I am experiencing that right now, working on a game with 5 others and being an extroverted one myself. The first one is also very true, but isn''t that what you were hoping to accomplish? There is no complaining and the job gets done, though slowly.
I completely disagree with what was said about that second scenario though. I worked pairwise writing a compiler for a course with a programmer who was quite introverted but everything worked well. I was the one doing the actual coding and he sat right next to me. As I was writing in the code, I was verbally explaining to him exactly what I was doing and why I was doing it that way. He would make occasional suggestions along the way about modifications I could make and I would either do it or we would discuss whose way is more efficient. The best part though was that if I reached a roadblock, I had someone right there who also understands the code written to that point to make suggestions to make things work. Another thing we did that was very effective was that when I was coding some tedious function, he would be planning and writing out test cases that may break our code, which found and eliminated a majority of our bugs. In the end, our compiler passed 97% of the test cases.
The key, I believe, to making pairwise programming work (or any kind of group programming, for that matter) is communication. The extroverted programmer can handle the actual coding but he/she must be keeping the introverted one involved by constantly telling the other what he/she is doing, bouncing ideas off each other, and letting them handle the testing.