Table of Links
II. Related Work
A. On the Existence of Pair Programming Skill
B. On the Elements of Pair Programming Skill
III. Research Method
A. Research Goal and Data Collection
B. Qualitative Research Approach
C. Our Notions of ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’
IV. Results
A. Two Elements of Pair Programming Skill
B. Anti-Pattern: Getting Lost in the Weeds
C. Anti-Pattern: Losing the Partner
D. Anti-Pattern: Drowning the Partner
E. Doing the Right Thing and F. Further Elements of Pair Programming Skill
VII. Data Availability and References
II. RELATED WORK
A. On the Existence of Pair Programming Skill
In the context of her PP experiments with students, Williams [10] describes the process of pair jelling as the transition of two individuals from “considering themselves as a two-programmer team [to] considering themselves as one coherent, intelligent organism working with one mind” [10, p. 53]. Such jelling appears to have two aspects: Individuals get accustomed to not working alone [11, p. 22], and a specific pair gets to know each other in order for some “bonding” to happen [10, p. 101]. Williams does not explicate what this phase entails or how long it takes, but she claims the student pairs were jelled after their first experiment assignment [10, pp. 63–64].
From an industry context, practitioner Belshee reports that “[i]t often takes days for a given pair to be comfortable with each other”, which he describes as a precondition for a pair being able to reach a state of highly productive “Pair Flow” in which both members have a shared understanding of their task [3, Sec. 1.2]. Belshee does not, however, mention what or how long it takes to get good at pair programming.
Bryant et al. [4], [5] analyze the abstraction level of utterances in the dialog of pair programmers in industry and note that there are differences between the pair member sitting at the keyboard and her partner—but only for pairs with less than six months of PP experience: The frequencies and types of utterances of “expert pair programmers” do not depend on who controls the keyboard [4, Sec. 5.2]. Bryant et al. conclude that in experienced pairs, both partners maintain a “clear mental model of [the pair’s] current state” [5, Sec. 6.3].
Authors:
(1) Franz Zieris, Institut fur Informatik, Freie Universitat, Berlin Berlin, Germany ([email protected]);
(2) Lutz Prechelt, Institut fur Informatik. Freie Universitat Berlin, Berlin, Germany ([email protected]).
This paper is