One thing I feel strongly about is that pair-programming is a skill, and that if both participants aren’t skilled at it, things will be rough. When I was at my coding bootcamp, they’d always separate us into pairs and have us pair program on the exercises they’d give us. It was terrible. The driver would always just go off on their own.
My experience with pair programming has been mostly positive. I’ve taken both roles, but more often as the navigator.
Incentives in school are different than at a real company: Individual grades vs the success of the company that’s paying your salary; getting along with people you may never see again after this semester vs approval of peers you may be working with for years. Also, the kind of people in a coding bootcamp are not necessarily the kind of people who would actually get hired to do programming.
Junior/senior pairings seem to work best when the senior is navigating and the junior is driving. Yes, it helps if the senior is patient and the junior is willing, but the junior is not particularly skilled at programming generally.
One thing I feel strongly about is that pair-programming is a skill, and that if both participants aren’t skilled at it, things will be rough. When I was at my coding bootcamp, they’d always separate us into pairs and have us pair program on the exercises they’d give us. It was terrible. The driver would always just go off on their own.
My experience with pair programming has been mostly positive. I’ve taken both roles, but more often as the navigator.
Incentives in school are different than at a real company: Individual grades vs the success of the company that’s paying your salary; getting along with people you may never see again after this semester vs approval of peers you may be working with for years. Also, the kind of people in a coding bootcamp are not necessarily the kind of people who would actually get hired to do programming.
Junior/senior pairings seem to work best when the senior is navigating and the junior is driving. Yes, it helps if the senior is patient and the junior is willing, but the junior is not particularly skilled at programming generally.