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Weekly Recap, 1540/5000: Pair Programming with Bloom
On the 1540th week of my life, I:
- Read: #AskGaryVee: One Entrepreneur’s Take on Leadership, Social Media, and Self-Awareness
- Programming:
- Interview with Bloom Solutions. Learned a lot about their company and how they code.
Pair Programming with Bloom Solutions
I’m writing this recap more than a week after the fact, but whatever. On this week, I met and pair-programmed with Ramon, Ace, and AJ of Bloom Solutions. This was the first time I pair-programmed in a long time, and also the first time I pair-programmed for an entire day. I love pair programming, because I honestly think it brings out the best in both of you.
So in coding, there are a lot of heuristics to measure one’s coding styles, but on a specific dimension (planning vs doing), there are two extremes: super doers (spray-and-pray/cowboy coders) and super planners (must get everything right first before writing a line of code). I have a tendency to lean towards being a planner: I’ve tried Rambo coding before and oftentimes I regret it at the end when I have to refactor. While this leans towards me making a more robust/structured systems architecture, it comes at the risk of over-analyzing and inaction. With pair programming, because we have to move on, we can make a quick consensus on the scope of the problem that’s happening and implement a solution.
I loved Bloom’s application process, much more than other companies’ processes because it’s practical and it makes sense. I’ve reviewed and sat in on interviews when I was at Sourcepad and it was so hard to evaluate coding talent in a short time frame. So there’s two types of output in software development: the actual code, and the thought process behind the code. You can check actual code on Github, but it’s hard to figure out someone’s thought process in a one hour interview. At least when you spend a day with the person, solving a problem, asking things, explaining things, giving and receiving feedback, you sort of get to know them both as a coder and as a person.
I don’t know. I’ll add to this post in the future. But I really do hope that software companies participate more in whole day pair programming sessions. If it’s a cost thing, then you really should participate because if you misjudge talent, then it will cost you more. Toodles!