An Experimental Analysis of pair programming

Pair programming is one of the practices of extreme programming. It's a technique in which two programmers work as a pair together on one workstation. One, the driver, writes code while the other, the observer, pointer or navigator, reviews each line of code as it is typed in. The programmer types the code is called driver and the person review the code is called observer or navigator. Some benefits that can expect from pair programming are: better code, higher morale, better time management, higher productivity and shared knowledge throughout team. In this paper nine experiments are conducted on students to evaluate three parameters: programming skills, number of errors in the program and completion time of program. Results indicate that programming skills increases and number of errors in the program reduces when students adopt pair programming but in completion time there is little bit variations. The feedback from the students show the positive result that pair programming improves knowledge transfer and enjoyment of work.