A cognitive perspective on pair programming

Pair programming has gained widespread popularity with the advent of agile methodologies like Extreme Programming. Studies examining productivity improvement resulting from pair programming have produced mixed results. One of the important factors contributing to successful pair programming is pair composition. Developers’ styles need to be complimentary to each other, in order for each developer to derive benefits from other’s strengths. In this research, we focus on empirically investigating the impact of pairing experts and novices in different ways on their productivity.

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