Distributed Pair Programming

Distributed pair programming has come a long way since I first tried it ten years ago. Even back then, it could work surprisingly well. Now, there are a huge variety of choices for how to do it.

This afternoon I had a need to do it and here's what we did:

1. Created a Google Hangout that we used to share screens.
2. Dialed each other; one of us had a mobile phone + headset, the other was on a VOIP system.
3. Went to work!

It worked surprisingly well!

If you try this, here are a few things to be wary of:

• Background noise coupled with headsets that don't do noise cancellation.
• Any generally distracting environment.

For reference, here is a modern list of cross-platform ways to share screens. The old standby, VNC, still works. But these days there are almost always better alternatives.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/335158/share-desktop-via-web-browser