Coding: Practice pair programming (DevOps patterns Guide)

This series of stories introduces most common DevOps practices in the industry. Each story focus on a specific point.

Pair programming consists of two engineers working together on the same workstation. This applies to the coding of the application code of course, but not only.

Pair programming patterns

There are several possible patterns. The most common is the following:

• A first engineer plays the role of pilot: he focuses on the realization, he writes the code.
• A second engineer acts as a navigator, reviewing work in progress, suggesting ideas for improvement and identifying future problems.

If the two engineers have different specialties, the practice of pair programming has the advantage of skills transfer.

The main advantages are:

• the reduction of the number of bugs,
• the production of simpler and therefore more maintainable designs.

On the subject of pair programming, the question of metrics is delicate: the speed of development is decreasing but the number of bugs is decreasing. However, it is precisely debugging that takes the longest to do.

Consider Pair Programming as an alternative to Code Reviews