1. May 2007 11:31
On the last Learning Tree ASP.NET course I took I never thought to inquire why we were made to work in pairs sitting in front of one PC workstation. Well it seems this is not a cost cutting exercise, which were my first thoughts. Apparently Learning Tree bases this on research and programming methodologies (namely Extreme Programming, which I may have to look into further at some point). According to the lecturer the perfect number of programmers crafting a piece of code is 1.8 (Some pieces of code are too trivial for two developers to work on simultaneously), but in a learning environment it is 2.2, with the extra help coming from the teacher and other peers in the class room.
Essentially what he was trying to say was; developers can't think and type at the same time, the product of pair programming is less errors and better quality, structured code.
