Pair programming is awesome. I love it. Programming with other developers feels like the most productive way to write code, and I miss it when I don't have the luxury of another colleague to work with. I don't know if it's the peer pressure of having someone else watching what you do, or having them there to back up your decisions. For me, I think it's having the pressure of not wanting to let your colleagues down, that makes me...more attentive or more productive when I pair programming.

Software to support pair programming has been around and you can always go old school and just sit next to the other developer. At Rapidparts, however, we have developers spread across the country both in Houston, TX and Holland, MI. Originally we looked into Adobe Connect as our solution to provide helpinars for our web sites, which Adobe Connect does very well. It also allows for us to share our desktops, chat, and supports VOIP. This combination of services and its ease of use makes Adobe Connect awesome for pair programming.

In a typical day I would start by calling Shane via soft-phone (VOIP+Jawbone=Nerdvana) and start up one of our meeting rooms. Shane would also open that meeting room and away we go. We started using meeting rooms in the traditional sense, in that we had one room with a for one meeting. Well as we started using this more, the other developers on the team began stepping on each others toes. So while "HoloDeck" and "The Gibson" are awesome to work in, we started using the meeting rooms as a personal portal. So I had a meeting room called ryanmontgomery and Shane had a room called shaneseivers. This allowed us to invite anyone to our own space when we needed a hand and never had to worry about overlaps.

This method also allows for me to have Shane's screen up on second monitor and my apps up on the first. I will also share my desktop so Shane can have it open on his second monitor and...you get the idea. Pair programming this way is unbelievably simple and amazingly intuitive. I can't stress enough how awesome pair programming can be when done correctly.

It's like new favorite drug, next to Intellicrack.

And yes I rock the dual monitors - and so should you.

Developers! DBAs! Designers! This Friday I'm driving over to Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor, MI to participate in the Ann Arbor Give Camp. What is a "Give Camp" you ask.

A Give Camp is a weekend-long event where software developers, designers, and database administrators donate their time to create custom software for non-profit organizations.

The weekend of true RAD is finally upon us. I'm also curious to see who I'm paired up with, and what technologies/methodologies we'll end up using. The weekend starts around 5pm and winds down Sunday at 3pm. It's basically a weekend of camping/lan party/volunteering/open spaces/not sleeping all rolled into one event. Oh Joy!

So if you have some time to spare, why not spend it creating cool apps, with cool people, for cool organizations. (Did I mention the free food and XBox's for downtime?)

Don't forget to register!