Hi Russel.
I have done 4 * 1 week ethnographic studies of commercial pair programmers.
I have to say that from what I've seen it is common not to write code sequentially.
The way many of the participants in my studies code seems in-keeping with studies of design that show it is partly in a sequence and partly opportunistic.
(e.g. Davies, S (1991) "Characterizing the program design activity: Neither strictly top-down nor globally opportunistic", Behaviour and Information Technology 10(3)),
That is, things will often come up that do not fit into the logical sequence in which the coding is being done.
Sometimes these issues are dealt with there and then, although sometimes they are noted down 'to be dealt with later'.
A conflict of approach is quite often dealt with explicitly by talking about it. Conversations like:
"What about X"
"Let's just note it down and leave it for now while we concentrate on Y"
Of course, a partner might think an issue really important and some discussion may take place before they decide whether to leave it or solve it there and then, but I have never seen this situation remain unresolved apart from in situations where both participants were very new to pair programming and just wanted to do things 'their way'.
My take on this is that these novice pair programmers have yet to learn the skills of articulating and negotiating a joint approach.
Hope that's helpful. Regards.
Sallyann.
Sallyann Bryant IDEAS laboratory University of Sussex
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