from Hacker News

Tom Dale and Yehuda Katz's Pairing Setup

by nixme on 1/2/12, 7:58 PM with 17 comments

  • by phren0logy on 1/2/12, 10:23 PM

    At the risk of adding very little, I'll say that I just got that same 3.4GHz iMac at work (with just the SSD) and it has RUINED me on everything else. It's the best computer I've ever used, including and since my Commodore 64.

  • by fbuilesv on 1/2/12, 9:53 PM

    Is pairing efficient when the two developers use different editors (or even different keybindings)? I feel my IQ drop by 30 points when I can't use my customized Emacs and I dont know if the benefits of pairing are enough to counter this.

  • by dotBen on 1/2/12, 10:19 PM

    The key bit of information that was missed from the piece is that, I'm guessing, the iMac is linked up in mirror mode to the Thunderbolt display on the other person's desk... so they are each seeing the same thing on their own computer.

    From the photo it wasn't clear if one person had the iMac and the other had a MacBook plugged into the Thunderbolt display -- which left me wondering how they were actually pair-programming.

  • by bentlegen on 1/2/12, 10:01 PM

    How many startups here use pairing? Anecdotal evidence tells me its mostly used by consultancies (Pivotal Labs and Hashrocket are others that come to mind).

  • by moe on 1/3/12, 11:34 AM

    Ah, this finally explains those Ember-commits by a guy called 'tomhuda'!

    Btw, I love that slight Statler/Waldorf-vibe in your story, i.e. running vim with two file-browsers because you can't agree on one. ;-)