Stopping and Reflecting

Adrian and I have been working hard Pair Programming for some time now (not really sure how long it has been). Thursday mid-afternoon we both realized our brains were fried. My realization came from the fact that I looked at something and thought I should care about it, but found that I didn't. Once we both came to the realization, we called it a day and then didn't work on it again until this morning.

I just take it for granted that this is a good thing, but Adrian pointed it out to me that on this morning alone we accomplished more than we felt we were capable of on Thursday or Friday. Less haste, more speed.

The break also gave me some time to reflect on what we had been doing. And one thing I think we hadn't been doing is reflecting on what we had been learning and fixing what wasn't working for us. I pointed this out, but we still didn't do it today, but I'm not so sure that we now need to. Hard to say, but I get the feeling that in the early stages of doing something new, it is always a good idea to get feedback as often as possible until the conscious competence turns into unconscious competence.

The other thing I realized is that Adrian was driving far too much and we weren't getting the full benefits of Pair Programming in that our communication wasn't as good as it should have been. I'm new to the domain, so I tended to get fried before Adrian and would kind of fade out of the picture slowly and subtly to the point where I'd feel lost. Adrian didn't really notice too much (at least I don't think so) and it didn't really slow him down. Today, I insisted that he leave his keyboard (we usually pair at my machine and he brings over his keyboard), which forced me to be an active participant for the full time. This time, we found ourselves fried at about the same time. Mine was the usual information overload, but I think Adrian was fried from having to communicate much more than he is used to.