Hi guys, this is my first proper post after creating this blog.

Today, I’m going to be discussing about pair-programming! This is a topic that I truly love to talk about because I have been doing this religiously for the past 10 weeks on Wednesday. I have three key take-away for those who are interested in starting or needs that extra push to even begin.

1. Being a student and a teacher at the same time

During pair-programming, the most common way of doing it is assigning two roles. The first role is the driver (the person who types on the keyboard) and the navigator (the person guiding what the next step should be). The benefit of being the driver is that you can ask as much and as many questions as you want. As you type, you will formulate some questions on the why and the how. These form the building block when you eventually realise how everything comes together when you ask the questions. Being the driver also helps you to think HOW to ask better question rather than blindly asking about this and that.

But my favorite role is the navigator. Being the navigator makes you think deeply as you give out the command to the driver on what needs to be done next or even how to begin. You will have to think and recall the content that you learned and as you recall, you help to solidify your long term memory and the content that you learned a few days back wouldn’t be lost to your short term memory - effectively making all your effort go down the drain. On top that, you can also help to understand what you learn better because the driver will be asking you questions that you probably thought of a few days back but now you can answer him because you would have learned the materials.

I hope I managed to explain to you what I meant by being a student and a teacher at the same time when you’re practicing pair-programming.

I will discuss about the second take-away soon so stay tuned and watch this space for more!

-Samuel