Exploratory Comparison of Expert and Novice Pair Programmers

keywords: Pair programming, experts and novices, quasi-experiment
We conducted a quasi-experiment comparing novice pair programmers to expert pair programmers. The expert pairs wrote tests with a higher instruction, line, and method coverage than the novice pairs and changed the given program skeleton to a larger extent. However, the expert pairs were also slower than the novice pairs. The pairs within both groups switched keyboard and mouse possession frequently. Furthermore, most pairs did not share the input devices equally but rather had one partner who is more active than the other.
mathematics subject classification 2000: 68N99, 68N19, 68M15
reference: Vol. 29, 2010, No. 1, pp. 73–91