Pair programming is a key practice in Extreme programming Agile methodology. Normally, one programmer is called “Driver” and other is called as “Reviewer”. As my point of view, I can reflect the pros and cons of the pair programming as follows.
If the both programmers are experienced, the codes they write should be more accurate and more solid than the codes written by a single experienced programmer because Reviewer can observe if there are any issues in the code while Driver is writing. But the con is that coding speed is low with compared to the single programmers. This kind of practice is suitable for complex projects that contains more complex coding.
If one is experienced and other one is inexperienced, Driver (Experienced programmer) can transfer knowledge to the reviewer (inexperienced programmer) while the coding is continuing. After sometime, they can switch the roles and check how fast inexperienced programmer has grabbed the knowledge. It helps to transfer domain knowledge and teach programming techniques while project continues to the newbies.
Therefore, considering above points we started to practise pair programming in our project from this sprint. In our scenario, we have implemented above second type of pair programming and we are experiencing benefits from it.
