When developers work in individual silos, one engineer will often code a feature from start to finish. Secondly, pair programming allows you to share knowledge on how the system is architected. Who knows, you both may end up learning each other’s favorite IDE shortcuts and tricks. They may have a fresh perspective on the problems at hand. It’s also important to remember that the mentoring and teaching is a two-way street.Īnd seniors - don’t underestimate your junior engineers. The junior engineer can learn how the senior engineer reasons through a problem, how they organize their code, how they name their variables, and how they troubleshoot issues when things go wrong. Pair programming allows the senior engineer to mentor the junior engineer as they work on real problems together. Instead, one is usually more senior and the other more junior. It’s rare that two developers are at exactly the same skill level. What good do we get from two developers working together? Teaching and mentoring opportunitiesįirst off, pair programming provides a perfect teaching opportunity.

So let’s look at the benefits of pair programming. These are certainly valid arguments and ones worth examining. Couldn’t you produce twice as much code if the developers were working independently on their own machines? Now, why on earth would anyone do this? Two developers working on the same thing at the same time? Surely that’s a waste of time.

How to zoom in visual studio code mac