[LRUG] "Designer code": with Ruby refactoring exercises

[Glenn Gillen]

As Murray & Graham said, I think humility and concessions are a large part of making pairing work.

On 7 Jan 2011, at 07:32, Graham Ashton wrote:

>> You could also not use ping-pong techniques.  If it's not your machine and you're not comfortable in the dev environment, don't drive.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I normally go as far as to arrange the windows on my desktop in a consistent manner when pairing, so that both members of the pair become habituated with which terminal to look in for test output, etc.

Having paired with Graham extensively in the past, part of what made it successful was ensuring that it never felt like "it wasn't your machine". That included agreeing on a consistent desktop layout as Graham mentioned above, but also included things like body position relative to the monitor. If you're sitting off to the side you'll always feel like 1st officer rather than truly being a co-pilot.

There's so many soft skills and environmental factors involved in making a really productive pair I think the only way to get better is to find people who are great at it, pair with them, and then reflect on the specifics about what they do differently and why.