Posts by Rob Baillie

Pair programming – you'll never guess what happens next!

Re: Dumb idea.

I would class myself as a good developer, and I work with some very talented people. I have also mixed with some truly inspirational developers over the years, none of whom were "introverted beasts". That's just a lazy stereotype.

Good developers respect other good developers and can see the value in their ideas and designs.

Developers who can't see and listen to alternatives aren't good, they're dogmatic.

Why not try it?

It's funny how the disparaging comments on here right now are along the lines of "I have a hard time imagining ", "I can't see me", "While I can see", which *suggests* that most of the people who are negative about it haven't actually tried it.

As someone who has worked with a team that pairs, and has done for about 14 years, I'm not surprised.

Yes, we've had some developers join who didn't get on with it, but I've yet to find a developer that I fully trusted who didn't enjoy it. Over the years we've paired to increasing and lesser levels and we've found consistently that our velocity didn't change, though the programmers engagement always dropped in prolonged periods of reduced pairing.

I would suggest that, if you're working in an environment where you expect your developers to be able to talk to your BAs or your customers and collaborate with them to produce quality software then you need people who would, by their nature, be compatible with pairing - Why? Because sociable and respectful people get on with it, and find they actually enjoy working together.

I'd worry about the output of any developer who lived up to the stereotype and just wanted to sit in the corner and get the job done. But maybe that's just me.

So, to those who "can't imagine" - why not stop trying to imagine and actually try it for a few weeks. Then you won't have to imagine anymore - you'd actually know.

Shotgun Wedding: Enterprise Architect 7.0

Producing a diagram is not the same as design...

"It must be assumed that a developer or software engineer creating a UML diagram is designing"

I disagree.. it must be assumed that a developer <<snip>> creating a UML diagram using a software tool is documenting a design decision.

I've used a few design documentation tools in the past and I can say without exception they come nowhere near a pen and a piece of paper / whiteboard as a tool for designing.

If you see a UML diagram as documenting a decision as was made at a point in time, then they still have good value. But I do tend to think a scan of a piece of paper is the most effective way of recording that decision.

EA7 does sound promising though...