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Ask HN: Have you tried mob programming?

by cenny on 8/13/22, 5:03 AM with 11 comments

Mob programming, the art of multiple programmers collaborating on one computer and still being efficient.

Have you tried it and did it work out?

By trying I mean doing it on production code for more than one day.

  • by cenny on 8/13/22, 5:13 AM

    We have now tried it for on one consecutive week and to my opinion with great success!

    The benefits that people are claiming I find are true, so far. It’s different, but it has almost eliminated all lead and wait time for us which I consider to be a huge obstacle for effectiveness.

    I got convinced by The book The Art of Agile Development (https://programmingbooks.dev/#the-art-of-agile-development) where he describes mob programming as an easy mode for collaboration.

    We used the book Code with the Wisdom of the Crowd (https://programmingbooks.dev/more/#code-with-the-wisdom-of-t...) as a guide to learn of to do mob programming.

  • by ipaddr on 8/13/22, 10:08 PM

    I have and I can't think of anything worse for developers. Being on the phone all day, group solving problems is a great for the below average to hide within the group.

  • by gardenfelder on 8/13/22, 7:25 PM

    I wonder how Robin Dunbar [1] would weigh in on this question. He originally wrote that the largest stable social network was around 150 people - laying waste to people on MySpace claiming 1000+ friends. More recently, he co-authored a paper which says it' closer to half dozen. If you have a large group, you break it up into smaller "committees" - in World of Warcraft, guilds have role players. The WorldCafe [2] argues for 5.

    In a recent "agile" project we formed a group of 5 people, 3 of which took on the software dev task and the result was fantastic.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Dunbar

    [2] http://theworldcafe.com/

  • by zufallsheld on 8/13/22, 12:57 PM

    Some time ago I talked about my experience with mob programming here and it got quite a good discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30383382

  • by aintmeit on 8/13/22, 2:24 PM

    The thing about mob programming is that it tends to lead to GroupThink. Mob programming feels good because you're not alone in facing this problem, which is a very human response. However, feeling good is not a reliable indicator of progress. In fact, I would argue that discomfort is a sign of potential growth. As long as you're not harming yourself or others, discomfort can be a sign telling you you're headed in the right direction.

    Either way, it's just a job and as long as you're behaving lawfully, there are no real consequences for you if you make poor decisions as a group. The project may or may not succeed, but at least you had fun, right?

  • by comprev on 8/14/22, 7:00 PM

    A company I worked at introduced it and my productivity fell through the floor. I gave it 6 months before concluding that it wasn't an environment that suited me, and moved on.

    Some people thrive, some people tolerate it, and some people consider it hell.