A few random thoughts after a year of pair programming

At work we do quite a bit of pair programming. Not 100% of the time, but a lot. Considering a manager at the last place I worked (who left years before me) told a member of our team he wouldn't bother paying two developers for one job, this has been a significant change. It's one of the reasons I was interested in working here. I'd heard enough talk about it and wanted to see it in action. And this week was a really good one for pairing (at least for me, maybe my pair would disagree, lol!) so I thought »

We get paid to sweat the details

The cool part about being a developer is getting to solve new and interesting problems. I feel extremely lucky, in a world full of mundane jobs that quickly fall into repetitive routine, that I get paid to brainstorm and create. It's challenging and rewarding, especially when I see something I created working and being used. I've been working on a new product (well, a new version of an old product) for the last year and that's been awesome - most of what I do is new and interesting. But it wasn't always so. At my last job, I worked almost »