egg timers

You also might consider trying to strengthen your partners to the
point where they take control from you rather than waiting for you >
to relinquish it.

For a short period, I had a pair who was so non-confrontational that I
had to set up a machine so that he had his own keyboard and mouse. He
simply couldn't say "please pass the keyboard".

There wasn't anything "wrong" with this behavior. He simply needed a
more physical form of permission to allow himself to take control when
it was appropriate.

The one thing I wish I had understood was the "personality of the
pair", since it was often not predictable from the personality of the
two programmers who made up the pair. Some pairs resulted in unusual
personalities with some great strengths. pairs resulted in tires
spinning from way too much power and no traction. And way too many
pairs were really just one personality either overwhelming the other
or simply shutting down and what we got wasn't a lot more than a pair
of eyes and maybe, if we were lucky, some mentoring.

I will probably always cherish coding with Taro, especially those
times where it seemed that we were coding the customer's desires as
she was realizing them. It's fun when you can't tell who wrote the
test. It's great when you can't tell who wrote the method. It's magic
when you you realize afterward that both of you typed the last word,
one hand each on the keyboard, without thinking.

Ken Boucher wrote:

For a short period, I had a pair who was so non-confrontational that I
had to set up a machine so that he had his own keyboard and mouse. He
simply couldn't say "please pass the keyboard".

Y'all have since gone to dual keyboards, right?

The one thing I wish I had understood was the "personality of the
pair", since it was often not predictable from the personality of the
two programmers who made up the pair. Some pairs resulted in unusual
personalities with some great strengths. pairs resulted in tires
spinning from way too much power and no traction. And way too many
pairs were really just one personality either overwhelming the other
or simply shutting down and what we got wasn't a lot more than a pair
of eyes and maybe, if we were lucky, some mentoring.

How promiscuous were you?

I will probably always cherish coding with Taro, especially those
times where it seemed that we were coding the customer's desires as
she was realizing them. It's fun when you can't tell who wrote the
test. It's great when you can't tell who wrote the method. It's magic
when you you realize afterward that both of you typed the last word,
one hand each on the keyboard, without thinking.

Right - I remember an anecdote, from long ago, that the "best" pair situation
was two introverts.

Guess that rules out most mailing list participants (-;

--
Phlip

Victor wrote:

Hi Phlip,

>The (idealized!) rhythm:

I like your use of the word "idealized". it feels too mechanical and depressing for me. I prefer it when the rhythm evolves naturally. It's very easy to create expectations that become burdensome, and therefore ineffective.

It is unfortunately "natural" when rhythms devolve, under quite innocent forces,
towards monogamous pairing, infrequent keyboard swapping, and delayed feedback.

By "idealized" I simply meant to ignore special-cause forces, such as bathroom
breaks, getting stuck on weird (temporary) bugs, reverting, phone calls from
irate offspring, fixing broken builds, tuning build scripts, Googling, and other
heroism.

team had a serious productivity boost when we switched from multi-day
pairing to mechanical and depressing proactive pair rotation every two hours.
For some reason, frequent and very wrenching context shifts helped keep us all
_on_ task. This boost was as inexplicable and counter-intuitive as other
mysteries of software engineering, such as XP.

--
Phlip

William Wake wrote:

I didn't, & don't know others who insist on it, and I do know at least
some who prefer not to have them. I don't know enough to make a
statement about "most XP consultants" though.

I am surprised this isn't a widespread practice.

Look at it this way. If you have dual keyboards, you still have the option to
push one back and forth. But with only one keyboard, you don't have the option
to not.

--
Phlip