Pair programming: There is no silver bullet

java.net Weblogs: Pair programming:
Everyone’s favorite argument

Just finished reading an interesting short piece and comments debating pair programming.

In my working environment, a smallish biotech software company, I belive there potetially could be a place for pair programming. However, I do not think
that everyone is equiped to participate in a pairing and its important to take this into consideration. There are likely benefits to pair programming in
terms of improved code quality and the followup efficiciencies. However, given that these benefits are not gauranteed, is it worth the effort? I don’t co
nsider pair programming to be a replacement for a code review.

My ideal situation for pair programming involves the pairing of a senior person with someone more junior. However, given the likelyhood of not having a di
rect 1:1 mapping of senior to junior, should you ever consider pairing a junior with a junior or a senior with a senior? Is it fair to a senior developer
to force him to dedicate time away from his tasks to work with others?

I agree in the need for communication between programmers. Does it follow that developers should work hand-in-hand, I’m not convinced. Programmers shoul
d be encouraged to ask for help when required, but not start depending or relying on someone else to solve a potentially difficult problem.

In short, there are no magic silver bullets, regardless of the appropriateness or inappropriateness of pair programming and XP.

Gallina: just a GMail based blog

Gallina

A cool (proof of concept) blog tool that uses a GMail account as its backend storage mechanism…

Features
* Uses GMail messages as “entries” (the message star is the publish status)
* Replies to conversations are the “entry comments”
* Uses libgmailer (gmail-lite project) to connect to GMail
* Uses XML/XSLT
* Is free software 😉 (GPL)

Pretty slick, could be interesting given the fact that most people seem to have an excess of google invites. The site is currently slashdoted so please b
e patient….

Google provides the infrastructure and end-user’s provide the applications. I wonder if this sort of thing was in line with google’s initial intention for
their mail service.

Just Ordered J2EE Development without EJB

J2EE with EJB’s (accessed from both a thin web client and thick desktop client) is what I do primary at work. However, for some time I’ve had an interest
in light weight containers but have only had the opportunity to play with Spring briefly on a personal project. I am a fan of what Hibernate offers the de
veloper (even if you’re only considering the query language vrs ejbql) and would like to understand it in a bit more detail.

From all reviews, Rod’s book looks like a good read so I figured I’d pick it up and throw it on the queue. I don’t have much reading material on the go ri
ght now, Code Complete 2.0 is the only thing I’ve been flipping through lately. Perhaps that will change now that summer is dieing down and the weather w
on’t be as enticing…