Can you really watch the other person while you’re doing your own thing, assuming it requires some degree of concentration and preferably a flow state. Watching the other person doing something entirely different sounds like a new opportunity for procrastination instead.
Pair programming works, because both people are working on the same thing, so watching distracts neither from their task.
The idea is that I check their screen from time to time (say, every 5-10 minutes), and if they’re surfing LW instead of working, I scream at them via chat. You could probably write software to do that, but getting kicked by a living person is more humiliating.
Alternately, you could write the software to check every so often and alert the working person that the non-working person isn’t working. That actually almost turns it into a PD situation, even without the being-yelled-at bit: If both people cooperate, nobody ever gets interrupted when they’re working.
Can you really watch the other person while you’re doing your own thing, assuming it requires some degree of concentration and preferably a flow state. Watching the other person doing something entirely different sounds like a new opportunity for procrastination instead.
Pair programming works, because both people are working on the same thing, so watching distracts neither from their task.
Still, this thing’s probably worth trying out.
The idea is that I check their screen from time to time (say, every 5-10 minutes), and if they’re surfing LW instead of working, I scream at them via chat. You could probably write software to do that, but getting kicked by a living person is more humiliating.
Alternately, you could write the software to check every so often and alert the working person that the non-working person isn’t working. That actually almost turns it into a PD situation, even without the being-yelled-at bit: If both people cooperate, nobody ever gets interrupted when they’re working.
Yes, good idea. Thanks.