The 50 year old programmer

[woohoo]

But that does not mean it is always the best way to approach the problem - two heads are better than 1.

What you seem to be saying is 'I know the best way to do everything and I am not interested in working closely with someone who may disagree with me. Especially if they may at times have a better way than me.'

Stop being scared of change and embrace it.

Following your logic, every development decision should be put to a vote, get the entire team involved. 10 heads are better than 1.

No, I'm a professional, hired for my services. If i think something through and come up with an approach then I will implement it. If I need help or validation then I will ask.

[Big Blue Plymouth]

But that does not mean it is always the best way to approach the problem - two heads are better than 1.

What you seem to be saying is 'I know the best way to do everything and I am not interested in working closely with someone who may disagree with me. Especially if they may at times have a better way than me.'

Stop being scared of change and embrace it.

No, not at all. I said in my previous post that I do interact and talk to other team members.

I guess I don't like the idea of sharing my desk with somebody all day every day. That's all.

[sasguru]

But pair programming, frankly, is horrific.
.

It's a while since I did pure dev, but that does sound horrific.
Not to mention counter-productive. The best programmers are orders of magnitiude more efficient than the average programmer.
Why would you slow someone down?
And even if you put 2 mediocre programmers together, you're only going to slow them down even more with very little improvement in quality.
Sounds like one of those stupid trends that IT is famous for, that is quietly dropped after a decade or so.

[VectraMan]

I may be the most anti-social person in the world but I thought when I worked places that have done it, stand up meetings were a great idea. It doesn't have to be a big deal, but anything that means people know roughly what each other are up to is all good. My last client seemed to be actively against communication and cooperation, not something I ever understood.

The thought of pair programming fills me with dread. I can't imagine any scenario where I'm not either paired with a numptie, and so I do everything, or I'm the numptie and so he does everything whilst I sit bored out of my mind repeatedly hitting refresh on my phone to see if anyone's posted anything interesting on CUK in the last 20 seconds.

Must remember to resurrect this thread in 5 years when I'm a 50 year old programmer.

[BrilloPad]

It's a while since I did pure dev, but that does sound horrific.
Not to mention counter-productive. The best programmers are orders of magnitiude more efficient than the average programmer.
Why would you slow someone down?
And even if you put 2 mediocre programmers together, you're only going to slow them down even more with very little improvement in quality.
Sounds like one of those stupid trends that IT is famous for, that is quietly dropped after a decade or so.

I *think* the idea is to make you explain your thought process so you are more thorough. It could only possibly work if you respect the other person. So it can never possibly work.

I think rubber duck debugging/development is far more effective.

[BrilloPad]

I *think* the idea is to make you explain your thought process so you are more thorough. It could only possibly work if you respect the other person. So it can never possibly work.

I think rubber duck debugging/development is far more effective.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

[BlasterBates]

Pair programming sounds like a horrific waste of time, i.e. costing twice as much to develop and probably completely destroying the motivation of the programmers, it's good enough to review your designs and code.

[woohoo]

I may be the most anti-social person in the world but I thought when I worked places that have done it, stand up meetings were a great idea. It doesn't have to be a big deal, but anything that means people know roughly what each other are up to is all good. My last client seemed to be actively against communication and cooperation, not something I ever understood.

Must remember to resurrect this thread in 5 years when I'm a 50 year old programmer.

Different strokes, I've found a weekly get together to be enough - saying that I've never worked in a team with more than 10 devs. Perhaps size matters.

We are lucky we don't work in Silicon Valley https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...o-old-for-this

[sasguru]

When I've recruited programmers (both graduate and experienced) in the past, I've tended to favour those who've done well in rigorous maths degrees.
They've always been far better at programming than their less numerate counterparts.

[VectraMan]

I *think* the idea is to make you explain your thought process so you are more thorough. It could only possibly work if you respect the other person. So it can never possibly work.

The thing is, in non-pair programming nothing stops you asking somebody else to go through something with you when it's necessary. We've probably all done it. Usually as soon as somebody is looking over my shoulder I instantly spot the stupid mistake, even before I explain anything. Even though I've spent a lot of my career working on my own I'd always rather work closely with other people for that reason.

But then once PMs get involved, and once everybody gets into the mindset of "I can't do that because I'm not allocated to that task" then common sense goes out the window. My previous gig even asking a simple question to one of my colleagues would result in glares from around the room. How dare you make noise?