woensdag 20 februari 2008

Remote pair programming

In preparation for Agile Egypt (www.agileegypt.com) my pair and I are creating a presentation and an example application. Since we have our try out tomorrow evening we wanted to go through the code examples some more. Because of schedules we couldn't meet in person so I proposed a remote pair programming session.

In one word: Amazing! And simple to set up as well.

We downloaded RealVNC (www.realvnc.com) for sharing a desktop. Installation and use of RealVNC is smooth. Don't forget to do some port forwarding in your internet router/firewall.

After installation simply start the realvnc server and publish your ip address to your pair. He will have to start the realvnc client, enter the ip address, press connect and its code time!

For the communication we used Skype (www.skype.com) to talk to one another. Even with realvnc sending the highest level of color depth over the wire (modest cable connections on both sides) there were no band width issues at all. I could hear my pair typ in Visual Studio 2008 and see his changes instantly.

Another positive thing about this way of pairing: No need to change chairs or keep passing keyboard and mouse around, we both had a keyboard and mouse.

Using this setup we had a very productive evening and it left me wondering "Who needs an office these days?".

 

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1 reacties:

Unknown zei

Hi Jeroen!

Unfortunately I did not find your email address in the web so I post this comment on your blog.

I thought it would be interesting for you to know that we had a session on Test Driven Development and especially WatiN at BASTA 2008 in Frankfurt (www.basta.net; one of the largest .NET events in Germany). Feedback was very good, people liked WatiN!

You can read a technical article about the session including the WatiN parts at http://www.software-architects.com/TechnicalArticles/TestDrivenDevelopment/tabid/83/language/en-US/Default.aspx. If you find the article worth reading we would be glad if you could post a link in your blog or on the WatiN web site.

Kind regards,
Rainer.