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• XP Prehistory (Score:4, Interesting)

  by dws (341)

  A number of XP's practices are quite old--Pair Programming dates back to punchard days, when the benefit of having an extra set of eyes look for problems could save a one day (or worse) compile/test cycle--but the genius of XP is in bundling the practices together. The self-supporting combination becomes much stronger than any one (or two or three) practices done in isolation.
  • Re:XP Prehistory (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ziggy (25)

    I think it's a bit of a stretch to date Pair Programming back to punched cards. There was a lot of 'desk checking', and asking others to look over card stacks and printouts. And, with the high cost of computing, there was a lot of debugging at the desk (both before and after a run), so many times, the second set of eyes was for debugging, not programming per se.

    But some of that is just picking nits. It doesn't matter a whole helluva lot if this is the earliest instance of pair programming, or a prototy
    • Re:XP Prehistory (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dws (341)

      I think it's a bit of a stretch to date Pair Programming back to punched cards.

      Jerry Weinberg told me that John von Neumann's team at IBM used Pair Programming in much the same form that XP employs it now. That'd be back in the days of punchcards. And Jerry is savvy enough to understand the difference between Pair Programming and desk checking decks.
      • Re:XP Prehistory (Score:2)

        by ziggy (25) on 2004.01.28 20:13 (#27862) Journal

        Fair enough.

        It doesn't jive with my memories or experiences before I was using a dedicated terminal/machine, but I wasn't programming with John von Neumann or Jerry Weinberg. ;-)

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