I was catching up on some blogs this afternoon and ran across this one from Martin Fowler's posted on 10/31/2006...
http://martinfowler.com/bliki/PairProgrammingMisconceptions.html
From my experience, XP/Agile has a lot to do with doing what makes sense in development and getting rid of the stuff that doesn't and if something is 'Agile', very little is mandated or else it wouldn't be very 'Agile', right? :)
I've been on teams where pairing is done. One particular project we did a lot of pair programming which turned out very nice IMHO. There were few bugs, we hit our estimates and the code was clean and well-factored. Most importantly, the client loved it and it solved a real business problem!!!
Another pairing benefit (which Mr. Fowler alludes to in his final point) is in the area of code reviews (you *ALL* do code reviews, right?). Just like documentation, security, and testing, code reviews are sadly one of the first qualities to go when a project gets behind because “there's not time to do it”, even when the reality is that “there's not time not to do it”. I see too much poor quality code get written and developers spending too much time firefighting because of hastily constructed in “heroic code“.
The final point in Mr. Fowler's post is about code smell; I have nothing to add except “RIGHT ON”! Developers constantly raise the layer of abstraction to raise productivity which is why we don't write business apps in assembly anymore. Duplicated code stinks, espically when there is a bug in it and it gets copied throughout the organization...grrr...
I think developers should give pairing more thought; if for no other reason than to reduce the chance of carpal tunnel syndrome by 50% :)
jk
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