Peer pairing is a curious thing for me. When I was last a developer, it wasn't a common industry practice I don't think. Moreover, I feel like there's a natural clash in pair programming between the "pair" and the "programming". The "pair" part mandates a social compromise, collaboration, and share of control between two people. But the "programming" part is usually a solo, solitary activity. Indeed, it's often an intensely personal and private thing. Developers have their own set-up for everything, painstakingly customized to their individual preferences: from text-editors to shortcut hotkeys to command prompt. Not only are work preferences often unique to us, but sometimes also how we approach design, development, debugging, etc. In essence, developers each have their own personal habitat, bubble, world of our own. And of this world, we are master and commander. Pair programming, then, can feel like a small yet cataclysmic coup. Like going from sole control and ownership of the remote to...*gasp* sharing. However, I recognize that the very nature of a bubble is insulation. Isolated systems tend to stagnant, not evolve-- which doesn't exactly align well with the fast-paced tech industry. Meanwhile peer programming is like a cross-pollination of knowledge. So I definitely see its value.
If there's one emotion I associate with peer programming, it's probably anxiety. I'd imagine there's less of it in practice since I assume it's usually done with a familiar co-worker. But at Dev Bootamp Phase 0, it's all with strangers. Making it tougher still, everyone has varying levels of strictness of interpretation on the roles and responsibilities of the Driver and Navigator. Luckily, the anxiety, at least for me, is mostly confined to the lead-up and very beginning of the pair programming session. After chit-chatting with my partner and starting on our challenge, any nervousness I have is lost in the focus of collaboration and the details of tackling the task.
I've usually had the challenge done beforehand (unless it was the GPS ones that you can't look at ahead of time), so for most of the pairing sessions thus far, I've been more of a guide than a peer partner. Having been a teacher, my challenge in these sessions, then, was to facilitate my partner in the necessary self-discoveries toward completing the challenge with the most silent and invisible hand possible. So far, it's been rewarding to hear the excitement and surge of confidence in the voices (and feedback) of my partners after our sessions.
My feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. I've had a few who have suggested that I don't complete the challenges ahead of time for a more spontaneous pairing experience. So in the next few weeks, I will try to at least leave the "Mandatory Pairing Challenges" undone.
In general, I enjoy writing feedback, especially on the positive qualities of my partners. For the constructive part, I'm usually good at pointing out avenues of improvement without sounding harsh or condescending or patronizing or terribly negative (I hope).