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Which forms a better pair while pair programming?

 
Greenhorn
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A team is always a mixture of experienced and novice programmers. So which of these forms a better pair.

- Novice & Novice
- Experienced & Novice
- Experienced & Experienced

I think Experienced & Novice will form a better pair as it will enable knowledge sharing. Just wanted to know what do other people think about it?

Regards,
Nandu
 
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It's hard to say which is best in general, because in each of these pairings, the pairing has value--you always learn something from whomever you're pairing with. Most of all, I think the best combination depends on the specific individuals in question. Some feel more at home pairing with someone more senior, someone else is more comfortable with an equally experienced peer, and so forth.
 
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Novice - Novice is a little bit risky. Not as risky as having a novice work alone, of course.

Experienced - Novice will certainly help a lot getting the Novice up to speed. Of course the experienced developer will be very much in a mentoring role, which not everyone likes to do for much of his time.

Experienced - Experienced can be *very* productive, in my experience. With some practice, communication is a non-issue, we understand immediately what our partner is getting at with a new idea, often before he even finished explaining it. There is a lot of mutual inspiration to gain.

Why do you ask?
 
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Have you looked at the material posted at pairprogramming.com? They've explored these issues, and many more, already.

- Scott
 
Nandu Jawale
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Why do you ask?



Because I was thinking about pair programing in our next release and could not make decision on pairs in our group.

Thanks for all your inputs and the link suggested by Scott.

Regards,
Nandu
 
Ilja Preuss
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Originally posted by Nandu Jawale:

Because I was thinking about pair programing in our next release and could not make decision on pairs in our group.



Well, you *shouldn't* decide about that. Let the pairs form like they want and pay attention to what happens.
 
Lasse Koskela
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You might also want to check this out.
 
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