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I always lose my patience and snatch the keyboard. Can't bear to watch one fingered typists at work...
We're philosophical about power outages here. A.C. come, A.C. go.
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I do not even touch the keyboard if someone stands behind me quietly... No way of pair (or mob!) programming with me...
Do you want to exchange ideas - write it down or invite me to meeting...
Do you want to do some code review/improvements to my code - you are welcome by all means...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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Back in high school, when using a Commodore PET at a friends house, we would take turns working on code, but not exactly 'pair' programming or 'mob'.
One of us would start writing code for 15 minutes or so, then walk away.
The next person would have to come in, read what was written, and proceed.
After 15 minutes or so, swap out again.
There was never any dialogue, no discussion as to what was planned... just try to figure out based on what you were doing, did they understand and continue building or do you have to move forward with their design as best you can...
The results were amusing.
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Yeah I remember those days....
The ones before porn on the internet.
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F-ES Sitecore wrote: The ones before porn on the internet.
FTFY 
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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When teaching programming at college level, I once in a last-year course tried organize the practical exercises, which was a farily big semester-length group project, in four stages. At the end of each of the three first stages, the results so far would be rotated among the groups, so that each group would take over that which was done by another group.
The idea was to let the students experience taking over someone else's work, which is very common when you get job as a programmer, but not during your study years. Second, and equally important: You can't keep secret what you do. It is not just an internal secret between you and your professor (or boss, when you get a job); your colleagues will see your code, and will judge you by how you have done your work. Get used to it!
Nice ideas don't always work out in practice. The students hated me for this setup! I forced them to reveal their innermost programming secrets, and to take over this horrible code from someone else, which was so useless that it would be much better to replace it all with the high quality stuff they had produced themselves in the previous stage. (They ALL though so...) They did NOT thank me for letting them try out a real-life-like work situation while still in school.
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Well, real life isn't exactly like that. At least, not in my experience.
#SupportHeForShe
Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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I can understand if you're mocking a UI up, or tweaking a workflow, or working through something like a database schema. You have all those invested sit in a room, you slap together some models, mockups, some diagrams or whatever and talk through the use cases and design until everyone's good to go.
But then everyone leaves so the dev can actually get the work done.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Is it a bad sign when the devs are the first to run out the door?
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
If software development were a circus, we would all be the clowns.
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Sounds like the typical development shop - 1/2 written specs, lets get coding!
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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charlieg wrote: 1/2 written specs
I like your optimism!
Marc
Latest Article - Create a Dockerized Python Fiddle Web App
Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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It sounds like a golfer, his caddy, and a couple of commentators... 
Caddy: I think this calls for a foreach loop.
Golfer: Not for something this critical; hand me the for loop.
Commentator 1: Interesting choice there, Bob, what do you think?
Commentator 2: Well, Bob, he's had good success with the for loop before and he tends to shank the foreach, so this should be a good call.
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If they, in dead earnest, argue in a mob which loop construction to use, then it is completely crazy.
I have had much more fruitful mob work in the early design phases, when data structures and breakup into subsystems and functional modules are discussed.
Obviously, that is a remenant of the riverfall model, from the ages when you tried to identify and describe the problem before you started programming. Today that is old-fashioned - the agile way is like "Ok, so you have a problem that can be solved by a program? Let's start with "int main(argc, argv) {return 0;}" ... Now that is in place! The next to do is for you to tell me about your program, and I will fill in code between the braces as you explain your problem to me...". In that style of work, there is not much room for mob data design or mob modularisation.
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I'd love to know what tools they use to streamline that process, particularly if they're developing a website! 
Marc
Latest Article - Create a Dockerized Python Fiddle Web App
Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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Hmm. This sounds like an overly-elaborate demonstration of Wheeler's Law(*): Typing proficiency is inversely proportional to the number of people watching you do it.
(*) My humble contribution to computer science fundamentals.
Software Zen: delete this;
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so if it goes south who gets the blame?
My best algorithmisizing is away from the keyboard and all distractions (aka the talking idiots): I think and/or draw the entire process through from start to end including got-yas. A the keyboard to easy bang out something that 'seems to work [here and now]' so 'she'll be right then,' only to have it blow a gasket on other/real data.
Also far easier to fix/enhance something you've already thought about as compared to something too quickly magiced together.
Sin tack
the any key okay
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Lopatir wrote: who gets the blame
You
#SupportHeForShe
Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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I don't know if this is Mob programming or Design by The Giraffe Committee but the way it often works here is I get 15 emails a day about how everyone thinks it should work while I try to keep up with implementing what they want.
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What is this, the government?
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To all the nay-sayers in this thread, I humbly suggest that you may be missing out on some very productive development sessions.
Personally, I find nothing more envigorating than sitting around a whiteboard with a team of creative and engaged developers mapping out a strategy for a complex coding task... and then moving to a computer and working together to wire it up. It feels like being in a group of surgeons collaborating on a complex surgerical procedure, or being on a team at Pixar creating a new movie.
Somebody in the thread mentioned the boredom of watching someone else type, but that misses the point: I'm never bored in group programming because I'm constantly working things out in my head, evaluating ramifications, anticipating next steps.
Obviously this type of work is not for everybody, but if you've never had the privilege of working together on a common goal with a creative team, don't miss the next opportunity to try it. It's addictive.
(Pro-tip: putting the least-experienced person at the keyboard is one of the best ways I know to bring that person rapidly up to the level of the rest of the team.)
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In the "old" days, we had multiple white boards (bigger than 60") and post-it notes (instant widgets).
Short setup and tear-down times.
One person at the board, a scribe, a stakeholder or too.
They used to call them JAD sessions.
"(I) am amazed to see myself here rather than there ... now rather than then".
― Blaise Pascal
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Why do I envision the next version of this to have an Electric Dog Collar, and everyone watching gets to zap the guy when they see a typo or a problem.
I used pair programming BEFORE it became big ONLY as a way to get New Developers up to speed on a deep code base. Also to make them willing to call in one of the Old Dogs to help keep them in a productive flow.
But I also made New developers do DAILY code reviews of EVERY line of code they wrote, and they had to rewrite it until it was up to snuff. The smart ones asked for a mid-day code review so their next day would start new work...
This concept... Just gets worse and worse. Pretty soon, they will record the sessions to be used against you in your (always late) annual reviews!
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