Journeyman Findings 1

Here are some notes I took during the first week of my Pair Programming Tour.

Discuss the expectations with your host up front.
At the end of each visit I do a short retrospective with my host. After pairing with Nik Graf for two days, we did such a retrospective and I found that he had different expectations for the past two days. He had paired with other people before, usually technical experts in one or the other area of the Blossom technology stack. He and his pair would hack away deep inside the bowels of Blossom code and get things done. When I joined him, he had to fix a potential security problem and we worked on some Google App Engine specific part of the application. I learned a lot but was not able to contribute much on this level of detail. I helped him with changes and offered general comments and advice on build, testing and deployment - whatever we touched during our work. That was not what he expected, nevertheless he assured me that my contribution was welcome, just on a higher level, "in a way how he had not looked at his application since a long time". We should have discussed his expectations at the morning of my arrival.

An initial design might block your options.
When I paired with Raphael last week, we discussed his needs and came up with a small drawing depicting a possible design. Coding went well for some time and we followed our design that I jokingly called our BDUF. After building several classes, Raphael noticed that he needed a feature that he had not thought of before. Instead of embracing the change in our design, I somehow did not like the idea and talked him out of it. In the evening during our daily retrospective we discussed what had happened. The needed change would have destroyed the initial design but I liked it and was almost proud of it. Subconsciously I had rejected the idea of a change that would invalidate my plan. I did not know that it was because of the design up front until we talked about it.

Bring keyboards for all languages used in your area.
Even when pairing on a small laptop an additional keyboard and mouse allow to change between driver and navigator roles more easily and so I brought my own keyboard with me right from the start. In Austria we use German keyboard layout but some developers use English laptops or just like to use English keyboards. Raphael used an English keyboard and showed me where to switch layouts, so I would be able to work with my German keyboard as well. Switching keyboard language took time and we forgot about it often resulting in both of us typing wrong keys. I knew the English layout and we decided to stay with it. Then I was struggling to find the proper keys for special characters like {}. On the next day I brought an English keyboard which resolved all my typing issues.

This is a positive experience!
When I explained my tour to some fellow coders, one asked me if I would create a list of worst code I have seen. I answered him that this tour is a positive experience. I have worked for big companies and I already know how bad code can look like. I assume that in the last 14 years I created more bad than clean code myself. I will not collect any findings because I am not interested how bad your code is. I am interested how you work and how you try to improve your code. Hosting a journeyman for a pairing session is a sign that you want to grow and I can show you how to fix that legacy code.