Pair Programming — Developing Junior Engineers in a remote team
Introduction
When I started my career as a software engineer, I recall having to observe more experienced engineers as they implemented features or fixed bugs in order to learn from them. This was a pretty solid foundation that helped me understand how to reason through problems as well as comprehend language-specific syntax.
With the recent trend of working in a remote team, it is rather simple for isolation to set in, especially for novices. The widely used notion of pair programming appears to be on the wane since its benefits are not immediately apparent.
Pair programming is a process in which two developers continually collaborate on the same Monitor while working on the same task. This method has been shown to increase team morale, reduce product risk, and improve knowledge management.
Why I think every remote team should adopt Pair programming
- Small teams may communicate more effectively and avoid isolation by fostering a collaborative culture. This allows alternative perspectives and suggestions on how to tackle an issue to be shared. It’s easier to understand why a specific solution to an engineering difficulty was chosen when you’ve seen the other alternatives that didn’t make the solution or implementation strategy.
- More rapid onboarding happens When junior programmers work with more experienced team members, they learn much faster. The more experienced partner will surely teach the less experienced developer more, while the less experienced partner may profit from the younger developer’s new viewpoint on a regular basis.
- In our work as software engineers, we often work alone while concentrating on a screen. In a world where everything is done remotely, this is even more important. Even if we’re only talking about technical matters, communicating with individuals on our teams is beneficial to our mental health.
Collaborative Tools That Can Help
How to Get Started
- Every task to be discussed during the session must be planned ahead and must be broken down into smaller pieces so that milestones can be measured if the time allocated is not enough since discussions often happen during such sessions.
- The participant should switch keyboards and roles intermittently since active engagement among all participants keeps things moving forward while also improving our knowledge and comprehension.
- You need to invest in a screen-sharing application that can allow you to take control of your partner’s PC during the solution since you are working remotely.
- Take your time to walk your partner through your thought process and implementation, as a partner, take time to note down mistakes and blockers you see from your partner’s implementation, bringing them up later without obstructing your partner’s thought process.
Conclusion
If you are yet to begin, paired programming will be extremely beneficial to your team in the long run. Even while it could take longer to implement and get things done initially, it will ultimately improve the quality of your team’s output since studies show that the time lost when coding is more than made up in time saved during debugging.
Finally, if you want to be a great engineer, you must seek out guidance from others. You can engage with people who are smarter than you by spending time in pairs.
The quality of results from any collaboration effort are driven by trust and respect. — Jim Highsmith
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