How do you structure and schedule your pair programming sessions?

When it comes to structuring and scheduling pair programming sessions, here's my approach: ✅ Communication: I start by communicating with my partner or team member to agree on the process and understand each other's availability. 🗣️ ✅ Schedule Operation Time: Based on our discussions, I schedule suitable times for our sessions that work for both of us. 📅⏰ ✅ Agree on Coding Standards: We ensure our work is professional and up to standard by agreeing on a coding standard to follow. 💻📝 These steps help me organize effective pair programming sessions, but success ultimately depends on the commitment and cooperation of everyone involved.

Pair programming sessions can be structured by setting a regular schedule, rotating the responsibility for scheduling, setting agendas, planning for breaks, deciding on communication tools, and allowing time for feedback and reflection. It's important to communicate openly with your pair programming partner to establish a structure and schedule that works well for both of you.

First understand that pair programming is not just for code reviews. Its primary use case is development. Another important thing to realize is that the "pair" doesn't have to be a human — it can be an AI! IMHO, nowadays the best code review tool and the best development partner is AI. You can use an AI built into your IDE like Visual Studio Code's co-pilot, or your favorite big-tech AI, or to run a local LLM using a tool like LM Studio. I prefer running local LLMs, aka PC-AIs. This allows to get perspectives from multiple AIs. The basic idea is to use an AI trained on code, like Meta's CodeLlama. Then, prompt the AI with your guidelines, and finally paste your code. Interact w/the AI for explanations & suggestions for improvements!

A beneficial approach I've discovered in daily work is abstaining from conducting code reviews on your code. This strategy effectively safeguards the quality of the code and mitigates the risk of overlooking habitual code smells.

As you communicate, realize that one of your key goals is to collaboratively explore a space of possible solutions. Any communication that negatively impacts your ability to explore this solution space needs to be avoided. Avoid jargon, sarcasm, personal attacks, among others. Do encourage, respectfully question, and consider alternatives. Good Luck!