prac8checkpoints.txt + summary

Prac 8 review-pair programming:

In this instance of pair programming it worked quite well. We established a few things before we started to avoid errors along the way as we both worked on the devious date program. We decided that we would use the Australian date format (dd/mm/yyyy) for the recognition of the dates, to avoid either if us working under different assumptions, eg. one working with Australian and American (mm/dd/yyyy), as our program outputted all read dates as dd/mm/yyyy.
Divising a test plan helped both of us know what we wanted the program to do and how it will work, this really help with the general understanding in the group. The ability to ‘bounce’ idea off each other helped in the progression of deciding how to go about the program and making it. I generally programmed faster because I wanted my partner to get something out of this prac in the short time we had to complete this tedious task. Generally had to reference a lot of methods off the Internet because we didn’t remember some basic functions to complete the task.

Disadvantages of this was having to adhere to the requirements of the task having a ‘navagator’ etc.. and swapping, just slowed the process. I ended up just coding the whole thing for efficiency. Another issue was experience in programming, my group member did not know much about programming and so it was really up to me to sort all of that. However I’m glad that my partner learned some basics about programming along the way. Other issues were the time constraint of 2 hours, we devised an appropriate plan to handle the task but we did not fully complete the functionality of the program.  Also due to time constraint everything was hard coded to assure that it works, did not have time to make it ‘efficient’ and tidy, just wanted the end product to work.

From this instance of ‘pair programming’ I might consider it again, although I have heard of a lot of negatives about pair programming. I think as long as each group member knows all the ins and outs of what is required of the programming, eg. units etc.., pair programming would work fine. Next time I think a extended time frame for the task and all group members having a solid knowledge of programming would improve the efficiency and performance of pair programming.