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0 pointsaantix9y ago0 comments

I'm pretty sure Pivotal and Carbon Five, two high end Rails consulting firms in SF require pair programming. I'm pretty sure that you can't hire Pivotal without contracting two of their engineering, strictly for pair programming.

Some of my best code has been written with pair programming but I can see the flip-side. There's no day-dreaming, there's no zoning out, complete engagement all day long.

It's the same mental overhead as with taking care of toddlers; you have to be constantly aware otherwise suffer the consequences.. :)

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shostack9y ago

Any idea how much of that is to juice margins by billing two people minimum? Surely the work is not completed twice as quickly.

twic9y ago

I work at Pivotal, although in London. We do indeed insist on doing all programming paired. I honestly don't think that's because of margins, though - it's that everyone buys into the XP idea that it's the best way to program. I don't think it does much for margins, because you have to spend twice as much on developers to get that double revenue, so the margin is the same.

Our normal thing is to form joint teams of Pivotal and client developers, and in that situation, pairing is also a really good way to teach the clients our way of doing things.

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