Pair Night is a night for pair programming.
We (the Madpy meetup, in collaboration with Big Data Madison and Mad-Railers) are organizing a Pair Night at Industrious on Thursday, Sept. 13, 2018 beginning at 6PM. Here is a link to the event on Meetup.com: <bit.ly/madpy-pair-night-v2>.
- What is pair programming?
- Why pair program?
- But I've never pair programmed before!
- How are pairs formed?
- Schedule of events.
- What to bring.
Pair programming is a style of programming where two programmers work side-by-side at one computer. The two programmers have distinct roles. The driver types at the computer, while the navigator reviews the code as it is typed and offers suggestions for future directions. The driver and navigator are encouraged to switch roles frequently.
There are many reasons to pair at work, but the reason we are holding a Pair Night is very simple: We think it is fun to write code with other people. Most people who come to our meetings do so because they are interested in learning new things with other people, so we hope that after a night of pair programming you come away having produced some working code, learned something you didn't already know, and had fun doing it.
If you have never pair programmed before, rest assured, you are in good company. The Pair Night is an informal event, open to all experience levels, and whether pairs follow the "rules" of pair programming isn't nearly as important as having a good time while you are here.
If you want to learn more about pair programming, you can review Pierce's slides, read this article in the New York Times, or check out the article on pair programming by Williams and Kessler titled "All I really need to know about pair programming I learned in Kindergarten".
The first part of the event will be spent finding a partner to pair with and a project to work on. The goal of the event organizers will be to help people with similar interests find each other at the event, and figure out a project to work on. To help everyone find projects, we have set up a digital bulletin board for posting project ideas.
Everyone is encouraged to post project ideas they think would be interesting to work on to the Pair Night Trello board. The board is public so you can view it without a Trello account. If you want to add something to the board, email [email protected] with your Trello username, or send me the project description, and I will post it for you so it is visible to everyone else.
You can post as many problems as you'd like. There is no obligation to work on any of the problems you post. The purpose of the board is to help generate ideas for fun projects, not to announce what you are going to work on. You can put as little or as much detail on the cards as you'd like, so if you have a specific project you'd like to work on, you can post that too.
Times are relative to the 6pm start time.
30min. Introduction, pairings, and project selection.
60min. Pairing #1.
60min. Pairing #2.
A laptop : If you have a laptop, please bring it. Since we are pair programming, not everyone will need a laptop, so if you don't have a laptop, don't let that stop you from coming. If we run short on laptops, we will form larger groups if we have to, and we will figure out a better system for the next Pair Night.
An external keyboard or mouse : The ergonomics of pairing are important. Given that everyone will be on laptops, having an external keyboard and mouse will help put a little more distance between the driver and the screen, and give the navigator a little more room to see what's going on.