Pair Programming is the Best

Coming out of a coding bootcamp, I didn’t do much paired programming. In fact, it was still hard for me to start asking questions.

Fortunately, after coding camp, I was able to obtain my first internship as a JavaScript developer. Since I’ve pushed myself into this new world of development, paired programming was so foreign to me. Honestly, I didn’t like it. In the back of my head, it made me feel like an ‘easy way out’ because I couldn’t get my code right the first time, and to depend on someone else made me just feel… weird.

Now two months into my internship, I’ve done a complete 180. I love paired programming. I definitely feel like I’ve learned a lot rather quickly because of it.

Why is it so great, you ask? A couple of things:

• it saves (potentially a lot of) time!
• refactoring
• different perspective
• learn a lot faster

All of the above actually intertwine. When you’re usually pairing with a mentor or someone with more experience, you’re most likely going to be getting a new perspective on how they would tackle the problem, which is awesome! It’s just another way for you to think about when you’re coming up onto a similar problem. Speaking of similar problems, if they or you see that a certain part of your code can be re-used for later, refactoring will cooly come into play; this definitely allows you to see and learn how to make your code more modular. And if you were stuck on the problem, your paired programmer is there to help make some progress, therefore saving you time, of course! You won’t be wasting as much time trying to ponder on what you could do (and have it not work) and instead, will be learning ways where it can from your mentor(s). There are just too many good benefits for paired programming.

As a new developer, I am definitely learning to get rid of this ego of ‘I should be able to do everything myself.’ It’s kicking in that I’m still ‘young’ in this world of development and that there’s SO MUCH to learn, even if I had more experience. Even my coding camp instructor is constantly learning and he’s had more than eight (?, sorry Matt, I don’t remember) years of experience.

Honestly, if your development environment encourages paired programming, I’d definitely start using it to your advantage right away. I took it for granted and tried to avoid it my first month because, like I mentioned before, I thought it would make me look like chump but those mentors/developers that are pairing with you have probably been in your shoes. They have some idea of what it’s like to be fresh to the scene and not know as much — that’s why they’re here to help by pairing with you in the first place.

Ask for help and ask questions!

In the words of Shia LaBeouf…

JUST DO IT!