Jeff Atwood's recent post Pair Programming vs. Code Reviews reminded me that I should post about my recent experience pair coding.

I spent the majority of the last three weeks pair programming with a co-worker rebuilding a UI framework that we've used before but lost the source code.  In my opinion, this was a perfect opportunity to try out pair coding.  We had two people remembering what types of things we did before, and what kinds of problems we encountered and wanted to avoid.

The thing that most suprised me about pair coding was how intense it was.  It was impossible to get distracted because the other person is there keeping you focused.  It was pretty exhausting compared to a normal day.  The best word I can think of is relentless.

Also, the quality of what we built is so much higher than I could have accomplished in the same amount of time.  I definitely think that the work we did was better than what we could have done working alone.  My partner saved me from writing so many bugs that I had no idea I was doing.  Granted, most of these would have been found by the compiler or the first time we tried to run, but I think it saved a lot of time.

Perhaps the best part of this period of pair programming is that I know everything that we did, not only my half of what was done if we had been working separately.  This was a key part of the situation because my co-worker had put his 2 weeks notice in.  I only hope I have a chance to work with him again.

Would I do it again?  You bet!  I now have no doubt that two developers can get just as much work done together that they could have done separately, and I think the quality is much better!