A fairly obvious observation hit me today…
If you are trying to pair program without also doing test driven development, when do you change roles? When doing TDD with Pairing, there is a rhythm to when the roles switch - see Micro Pairing. But if you’re not doing TDD, the person typing is frequently lost in solving a fairly large problem, they are balancing a bunch of things in their heads, and they have to finish a big thought before they could possibly swap the keyboard with their pair. So, while the typer is solving these big problems, what does the other person do? Just sit there? It just seems pretty painful…
I’m sure its not impossible, but it sure seems like TDD is a near necessity for Pair Programming.
Thoughts?
— bab