Distributed Pairprogramming for Wordpress development?

[Eike Starkmann]

Dear Wordpress Team,

My name is Eike Starkmann and I'm working working as part of the Saros
Team at the Freie University in Berlin.

Saros is an Eclipse plugin for collaborative text editing and
distributed pair programming, i.e. it allows two or more developers to
work together in real-time on the same files. It is similar to Gobby,
SubEthaEdit or Google Docs but focuses on programming in Eclipse.

It is my master thesis to figure out whether Saros is useful when
developing Free/Open Source Software. I already was in contact with  to
other projects, for example Typo3 and got some good response.

In my opinion Wordpress can benefit from Saros because I think it brings
many advantages to Open Source Software development:

* Distributed Pair Programming is like a live peer review. This should
help with finding good design, get rid of bugs, increase readability, etc.

* Transferring knowledge should be easier to do when more than one
person look at and work with the same code. This should also help to
give new developers an introduction to the code.

* In contrast to screen sharing, Saros only shares your actions inside
of Eclipse with regards to the project you are both working on (think
privacy) and you are still independent to explore the project on your own.

Saros can be useful in the following contexts:

* Working on complicated problems in the code
* Performing code reviews
* Debugging
* Code presentation
* Code sprints
* Introducing new developers to the project
* ...

What do you think? Could you and Wordpress benefit from doing pair
programming using Saros? If you think so I would like to join our
project and help you with using Saros.

If you are interested in Saros but still curious about how it works
please visit our website or feel free to contact me.

I hope you will find Saros useful and give me feedback.

Kind regards, Eike Starkmann

Website: https://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/w/SE/DPP
Update Site: http://dpp.sf.net/update
Saros @ SF: http://sourceforge.net/projects/dpp/
Programming Languages Supported by Saros :
https://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/w/SE/DPPCompatiblePlugin


--
Eike Starkmann
This message is part of my Master thesis research. Feel free to contact
my advisors in case of inappropriate behavior on my side:
christopher.oezbek@... and stephan.salinger@...
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[Otto-19]

On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 7:48 AM, Eike Starkmann
<eike.starkmann@...> wrote:
> Saros is an Eclipse plugin for collaborative text editing and distributed
> pair programming, i.e. it allows two or more developers to work together in
> real-time on the same files.

Speaking as somebody who's been coding professionally for 10 years, I
couldn't let this go by...

I've had to do this sort of thing before (not distributed, but pair
programming). It is, by far, the worst idea ever conceived by
man(agers). I would rip my own arm off and beat myself to death with
it before I'd ever do this sort of thing again.

The theory of pair programming is that you have two developers working
on the same piece of code, able to notice and correct mistakes.

The reality of pair programming is that one guy is better than the
other guy, and spends half his time explaining the problem and
solution to the other guy, instead of simply coding the damn thing.
The lesser of the two programmers only drags the other guy down to his
level, and wastes both of their time.

The only way that pair programming works is if both programmers are a)
equally skilled and b) not particularly skilled. In other words, for
newbs fresh out of college, it works fine. For a seasoned programmer,
the very notion is a valid reason to look for a job elsewhere.

In general, it's a horrible practice, and anybody actively using it is
an idiot. IMO, of course.

Also, peer review is highly overrated as well, for other reasons.
People who actively write good code don't need it, and people who
don't write good code shouldn't be put in the position of writing code
in the first place.

-Otto
Sent from Memphis, TN, United States
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[Eike Starkmann]

Otto wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 7:48 AM, Eike Starkmann
> <eike.starkmann@...> wrote:
>> Saros is an Eclipse plugin for collaborative text editing and distributed
>> pair programming, i.e. it allows two or more developers to work together in
>> real-time on the same files.
>
> Speaking as somebody who's been coding professionally for 10 years, I
> couldn't let this go by...
>
> I've had to do this sort of thing before (not distributed, but pair
> programming). It is, by far, the worst idea ever conceived by
> man(agers). I would rip my own arm off and beat myself to death with
> it before I'd ever do this sort of thing again.
>

Perhaps you made some bad experiences, with pair programming and it is
good that you share it, but there are a lot of people who have made
different experiences and find it very useful.
> The theory of pair programming is that you have two developers working
> on the same piece of code, able to notice and correct mistakes.
>
> The reality of pair programming is that one guy is better than the
> other guy, and spends half his time explaining the problem and
> solution to the other guy, instead of simply coding the damn thing.
> The lesser of the two programmers only drags the other guy down to his
> level, and wastes both of their time.
>
Yes that can happen, but did you ever thought of the knowledge transfer
that happens in this situation. I think there is no better way for
training a newcomer than putting him together with a skilled developer
explaining him while working how everything works. By the way are there
such big differences in the wordpress core team?
> The only way that pair programming works is if both programmers are a)
> equally skilled and b) not particularly skilled. In other words, for
> newbs fresh out of college, it works fine. For a seasoned programmer,
> the very notion is a valid reason to look for a job elsewhere.
>
> In general, it's a horrible practice, and anybody actively using it is
> an idiot. IMO, of course.
>
Of course a programmer who doesn't want to explain what he does and
prefers work alone will not like pair programming.
> Also, peer review is highly overrated as well, for other reasons.
> People who actively write good code don't need it, and people who
> don't write good code shouldn't be put in the position of writing code
> in the first place.
>
That's also one think you can learn while working together with a
skilled programmer, although I don't believe that good code is always
bugfree, everybody makes mistakes.

Al least, I just wanted to find out, if such a tool like Saros can
improve/be useful for open source software development. There are lost
of scopes behind just doing pair programming, for example reviewing
security patches.

Greets, Eike

--
Eike Starkmann
This message is part of my Master thesis research. Feel free to contact
my advisors in case of inappropriate behavior on my side:
christopher.oezbek@... and stephan.salinger@...
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[Doug Stewart]

On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 10:06 AM, Eike Starkmann <
eike.starkmann@...> wrote:

>
> Perhaps you made some bad experiences, with pair programming and it is
> good that you share it, but there are a lot of people who have made
> different experiences and find it very useful.
>
>
Which is all well and good, if the point of the exercise is training up
newcomers.  However, if the intent is to produce clean, bug-free code in a
fast and efficient manner, what Otto pointed out is true in many/most
situations: you're going to handcuff a gifted programmer and produce worse
code, slower.

It's fine and dandy to do pair programming if you want to initiate knowledge
transfer (what we used to call "teaching"), but as I said, it's not exactly
the best when it comes to clean code, quickly developed.

--
-Doug
http://literalbarrage.org/blog/
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