Extreme Pair Programming II

We ran our first “Extreme Pair Programming” session yesterday and I overall I think it was a success. We started with some fairly easy problems and got through them quickly, growing our confidence and perhaps inflating our egos. Once the implementations start being non-trivial, it turns out the exercise is really quite difficult, particularly if the person devising the solution is struggling to do so, and we spent a long time trying to complete this Leetcode problem ultimately without success. I’ll try and get round to completing the problem at the weekend so I can post the solution.

Ultimately the exercise was a lot of fun, which already makes it a big win in my book. It was also an opportunity for us to practice some of our technical skills, but most importantly, it was a chance to practice communicating effectively when it came to our code, something we strive to do on a daily basis. I think vetting the problems beforehand would’ve made the session run smoother, but the thing I like about the format is that there are lots of variations on the theme that can be achieved. I’m hopeful we’ll repeat the exercise in the near future.