Pair Programming Over Network
As collabration proved its impact on productivity, programming also started to be done by teams instead of individuals only. Programming culture has brought the habits like mob programming and pair programming which enables developers to work on one station and one code base together in real time.
Working alone on a project for a long time started to be less charming and less educational compared to working together and brainstorming with teammates.
What is Pair Programming?
Pair programming means two developers writing code together at one station while mob programming means more than two developers such as a whole team writing code at one station. Those sessions are part of developers regular development cycle and missing them definitely would mean losing interactivity in the teams.
Problems after hybrid working
Especially after the pandemic, we all started to work from home or from different locations; however remote working not only means meeting online and ensuring audio or video quality. It also means introducing solutions for teams to collaborate together.
At the first times of the pandemic, many of us have tried explaining a code block to eachother or showing eachother how to make a change in a code piece over an online meeting. It usually ends up someone repeating lines like that and drives everyone just crazy:
So, it was very urgent for developers who likes to collaborate on the code to find a solution, yet almost all the known compilers started developing extentions or plugins for creating collaborative sessions over network on the code files.
How does pair programming over network work?
There are many software plugins, extentions or applications which allows us to have smooth experiences while working on the same code in real time.
For example IntelliJ has Code with Me plugin which allows us to have a live session on one station and edit the same code together. Visual Studio Live Share is on the other hand an extention on Visual Studio Code which does the same job and lets developers to start a live share and easily copy a share invite to others with any intended access rights.
Here you can take a look at the video I created in order to explain how pair programming over network works and how you can use Visual Studio Live Share for it:
There are also many applications which focuses on collabrative programming only. Tuple, CodePen, CodeAnywhere and many others can be used for working together on a code base in real time without dealing with plugins.
In summary, as everything, interacting on the same code or any file is also possible over network! It definitely makes up for the one big thing hybrid working has been missing and the current software solutions tries to make the hybrid experience almost as good.
Try it out and see for yourself! Here are some links to download these solutions: