Collective programming?

Ecris le 26 janvier 2005
Dans la catégorie Uncategorized |

Laurent just started a Dojo Development dedicated blog. His first post ends with the frustration that not every participant code at each session.

I say “frustrating” above, because in the realization some things that seemed “obvious” in vision turn out to be difficult in practice. One of these is the idea of having every participant in the dojo actually code during the session. For some reason, I can’t shake the feeling that this is crucial to the “true nature” of the Dojo, but many participants don’t share this feeling or are skeptical of it.

I must admit I am one of the sceptics, only for practical reasons.When you are on a real dojo, judo one for instance, you are practicing with your pair, but you can also, at the same time, have a look to all the other members of the group, and compare yourself in real time with some reference. If you feel you are not doing the exercise very well, the other practitioners can show you the way, in addition to the demonstration from the teacher.When you are pair programming in a learning room, your pairmate can give you some feedback, but you don?t get feedback from other pairs. You need to interrupt the other pairs, one, some or all, to give your feedback and get feedback from them. I think a 2 hours session is too short for programming and then get feedback. Moreover, I think that the value of the group is to discuss all together. Pair programming is of course the essence of the exercise, but it can be done elsewhere, at some other time.For instance, we could do some Web Pair Programming to prepare the group session.Of course, one can argue that a session could be spend on programming, and the following one could be spend on feedback. I still think that getting 10 persons one evening per week to program together is not easy, and then has a cost. I think that the group discussion has more value than the pair programming, which could be done asynchronously, for a lower cost.Yes, the negotiation and the communication is one part of the exercise