Day 2 - Makers Academy

pair programming, or how to exhaust yourself by talking about everything while learning quite a bit about coding and yourself

Today I spent about about 5–6 hours in conversation with my pairing partner Pete (3P) which yielded about 6 or 7 Rspec tests and maybe 20 lines of Ruby code. This was exhausting. I also feel like it was a productive day.

From what I understand so far, everything outside of the weekend challenges is done with pair programming. In this you pair up in twos, one person is dealing with the code (the driver) and one person is there to ask questions, bounce ideas of, go look up methods, do whatever is needed (navigator). You swap roles every 15 minutes. After the past 4 weeks of putting on headphones and hammering through problems on our own this was a big change.

My pair today was Pete. He was amazing. He indulged all my questions, was happy to experiment, and was very open about not knowing things. I feel I know Pete pretty well now. There was at times a lot of frustration and struggle but at no point was anyone pissed off or even close to losing their temper and we learned a huge amount. Overall I’ll take that as a huge success.

One tip about pair programming from our coach Dan I thought was most beneficial was

if there is ever conflict just give in immediately.

If it works, great you picked the right way and off you go to next problem, and if it doesn’t work then you get to try your way anyway. Easy.

He did warn of the risk of a polite-off where both people are so accommodating you fight about going the other person’s way. Imagine Mrs. Doyle off Father Ted fighting over who’ll pay for the tea.*

Goal for tomorrow is to shut up even more and really listen when my partner is talking. I think I did okay today but we were both so excited we occasionally talked over each other. Also towards the end of the day my brain gave up and I became effectively an audio typist for my pair not really getting the rationale behind the code I was entering. I’ll aim to be stronger tomorrow and not let completion take priority over understanding.

*Incidentally I’m so grateful for Father Ted and the 20 years of joy I’ve gotten out of it. They had a marathon on E4 after Frank Kelly (Fr. Jack) died on Sunday and its still as funny as it ever was. Next time you’re stressed out or bit down just watch the caravan episode of Father Ted, or the racist episode or pretty much any episode and I promise you’ll laugh a lot.