Ir al contenido principal

Entry #6: Pair Programming

“All I Really Need to Know about Pair Programming I Learned In Kindergarten” is an article written by Laurie A. Williams and Robert R. Kessler in 2000; it was published in the scientific magazine "Communications of the ACM" from the Association for Computing Machinery. In the article, the writers talk about the pair programming technique while explaining some concepts about it.

Pair Programming is the practice in which two programmers work side-by-side, but, only in one computer, while collaborating on the same design, algorithm, code or tests. Pair programming helps to improve productivity, efficiency and the quality of software products, this improvement also helps programmers to create confidence in their solutions.

The writers indicate that all the skills from pair programming, we have learned them while we were at kindergarten. While I was reading the article, I must say that they were correct; since my mother is a kindergarten director, I have already heard those "rules" before. These "rules" or principles as the article mentions are the next ones:

Share everything - You share your code with another person.
Play fair - You have to keep things simple between your co-worker.
Put things (especially negative thoughts) back where they belong. - Do not move or change the code of your partner.
Clean up your mess. - Make your code clean, because, your partner could work with it.
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. - Respect each other if things does not go well.
Don’t take things too seriously. - Keep calm, remember you are working in a team.
Communicating with others. - This rule is the most important of all, communication is the key to success.
Take a nap (or a break from working together) every afternoon. - Take a rest after coding.
Be aware of wonder (and the power of two brains working together). - This rule is more like an advise, two are better than one.

I think we should learn to program by our own or in pairs, however Pair Programming is a great option to share ideas while we are developing software.

Article: Williams, L., & Kessler, R. (2000). All I Really Need to Know about Pair Programming I Learned In Kindergarten. Recovered from http://34.212.143.74/s201913/tc2006/pair_programming_kindergarten.pdf

Comentarios

Publicar un comentario

Entradas populares de este blog

Entry #9: Language as the Ultimate Weapon

"Language as the “Ultimate Weapon” in Nineteen Eighty-Four" is an essay written by Jem Berkes in 2000. In the article, Jem Berkes discusses the inspiration behind the Newspeak language used by George Orwell inside his novel 1984 (Nineteen Eighty-Four) and how it reflects in real-world situations we face day to day and how the language is powerful enough to express meaning, intention and ability.  Inside the novel 1984, there is a language called Newspeak which is a simplification of the English language, or as the novel refers it as Oldspeak. Newspeak vocabulary eliminates words that are not necessary. The new vocabulary helped the government to control people and affect memories from person's, in order to forget most of them or provoke and affect the way a person could express or think. However, in this particular entry I won't talk about the essay written by Jem Berkes, I will answer a question asked by my professor which is something related to the essay...
1 comentario
Leer más

Entry #4: Dick Gabriel on Lisp

"Dick Gabriel on Lisp" is a 60 minute long podcast produced by Software Engineering Radio in 2008. In this podcast, Dick Gabriel talks about his professional background and about the history of Lisp programming language and its functions and characteristics. Dick Gabriel is a computer scientist who studied at the Stanford University. He started his own Lisp company in 1984. Lisp is one of the first programming languages developed with a functional approach. Functional means that a function can be evaluated and when it returns a value, it is then evaluated by another function and so on. The computation or algorithms are done by nesting functions, in other words, a function is data and a data can be a function. However, other programming languages have taken over the industry in the next years, leaving behind Lisp. Modern programming languages have a more attractive and easier to understand method of coding in comparison to Lisp. Nevertheless, Lisp has been used in oth...
Publicar un comentario
Leer más

Entry #3: The Promises of Functional Programming

“The Promises of Functional Programming” is an article written by Konrad Hinsen in 2009, it was published in the scientific magazine "Computing now" from the IEEE Computer Society (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). In the article, Konrad Hinsen talks about functional programming while using examples made in Clojure programming language, in order to explain some essential concepts about functional programming. The article shows the characteristics and advantages of functional programming using Clojure, and it also explains the differences between functional and traditional programming. Functional programming was created in the 50s, however it has been used to write programs, because of its advantages for concurrent and parallel programming, and its robust and easier to test. A functional programming language is a language that operates by evaluating mathematical functions, like declarations and expressions. The fundamental principle of functional program...
Publicar un comentario
Leer más