Even the most experienced programmer can learn from pair programming. There's a collection of things that I've learnt over the years since starting pair programming that I don't think I'd have learnt any other way.
Like many programmers, I'm not great at reading the manual unless something goes wrong or I want to know how to do something specific. I'm generally too busy to just browse through a manual and find interesting things. However, when pairing, little tips and tricks come up that I find useful but I would never have deliberately looked for.
I know it's not just me, because, when pairing with other experienced developers (who are less experienced in pair programming), sometimes I'll do something and they'll make a comment like "oh - neat - I didn't know you could do that".
None of the examples here are likely to change your life, but do have some memorability for me personally in terms of things that made me go "oh - neat" that I would not have found otherwise. There are lots of these sorts of things - here's just a sample of 3. Please feel free to add more examples that you've come across by posting a comment.
Virtually everything I've learned about Eclipse has come from pairing, and I'd say I know about 10 keyboard shortcuts and that's it :-)
Still it's interesting to see, when I'm pairing with others, just how many of those shortcuts I pass on. (Ctrl-1 for suggestions, Ctrl-D to delete a line, Ctrl-Shift-R and T for finding files and classes/interfaces respectively were the ones I passed on in the past few days).
Posted by: Aidan at June 9, 2006 6:56 AMHi Aidan,
I agree - keyboard shortcuts (and general IDE driving) is one area where pair programming makes a really big difference. Despite being a keyboard klutz compared to many of my former TW colleagues, I find that I pass them on to people who have done less pairing.
Ivan
Posted by: Ivan Moore at June 9, 2006 9:21 PM