Remote pair programming - What are YOUR best practices?

The certain situation the world has been in for the past almost two years has affected a lot of us devs all around the globe. This hasn't stopped us from delivering amazing software and do good deeds though - Au contraire! Think of global remote hackathons, local efforts to create services that help people in need, providing schools with old laptops, the list goes on.

Arguably, the tech industry has adapted rather quickly. Video calls became a widespread norm, employees of some companies, like Twitter, can now work from home forever if they want.

(As a little disclaimer: I'll use the word "remote" in this post to describe non-onsite things in general, even if you're in the same town as your peers.)

With the new remote situation came a few hurdles, though. And in this post I want to discuss some of these hurdles, and more specifically, how to overcome them. A specific topic I'd like to look at today is pair programming.

Pair programming is a very helpful technique. It helps to onboard new team members to an existing application, give juniors an opportunity to learn from more senior devs (and vice versa!), discussing ideas and concepts. A popular approach to pair programming involves two roles: A driver and a navigator. While the driver is doing the actual coding, the navigator tries to keep the overview and give directions to the driver. Both people get to discuss their ideas and find the best solution together.

From my experience, two people are usually working on the same computer. They come up with a plan together, write down open questions and then get going. I've done this with peers for weeks on end. However, the remote situation has made pair programming rather rare, at least in my team. It can be rather tedious. Screen sharing works, don't get me wrong, but it's easier to point on something on screen with your finger than to figure out the lines (and read them aloud at the same time!) of some blurry editor while the other person is scrolling along. I've played around with IntelliJ's pair programming feature for a bit, but not everyone uses IntelliJ either. For me, coding together on the same machine still feels a lot more productive.

So, what are your experiences? What tools do you use? What are your best practices when it comes to remote pair programming?

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