Virtual Pair Programming

- Page 1 - Virtual Pair Programming 8/28/03 Version 1.0

Virtual Pair Programming

Kirk D. Blackburn

Qwest Information Technologies

[email protected]

Stan Benda


[email protected]

Saogat Rab


[email protected]


Introduction

Nice to be back at ESUG!

ESUG ‘02 – Web Services

This year: Virtual Pair Programming

My Team

Project background


Structure of Presentation

Problem Description

Approaches

Experiences

Empirical Studies

Summary and Conclusions

Bibliography


Problem Statement

Prague

Cloud

Stan’s WorkstationQwest

CorporateNetwork

Saogat’s Workstation

Kirk’s Notebook

Denver Colorado

Minneapolis Minnesota

Kirk’s Workstation

ENVY Repository

Pairing Workstation Pairing Workstation


Problem Statement

Envy is very chatty

Use of ENVY over a WAN is painfully slow

How to achieve reasonable experience remotely

Collect informal data on Virtual Pairing experience


One Approach We Use VNC (Virtual Network Computing)

Downloadable from

http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/download.html

Cross-platform

Does not require Windows

Virtual Pairing does not require a telephone Voice communication is required Internet voice messaging is possible


VNC Settings


VNC with Headsets

Acceptable experience when Smalltalk image– Is physically close to ENVY server on the network

Poll full screen is not necessary and expensive.

Allows 2 mice, 2 keyboard

Share entire desk top (privacy)

Host Cursor disappears with more than 1 client


VNC on Unix

On Unix VNC is started by command line configuration (if you do not have root access on machine):

vncserver -ac -nolisten local -depth 16 -geometry 1280x1024


VNC on Solaris

On Solaris it is good to have set-user-id bit set on Xvnc executable and have that executable to be owned by root

Users running Xvnc server not need to be root


Another Approach

NetMeeting

Good for drawing pictures

Giving and taking control

Can Share just one application (privacy)

Requires Windows


NetMeeting Problem

Problem: Does not render Visualworks Windows– Loss of lines

Solution: Start Remote Desktop on VW server– Open NetMeeting on server and share RDC


Remote Desktop Connection

Logon and select Options


Remote Desktop Connection settings


RDC Experience tab


Set to Custom to reduce bandwidth


RDC problems

Event handling occasional very slow

Seems related to VPN


VPP Experience Summary

VPP can be done – Even in same office building

Telephone Phones/headset preferred– Net-based voice less desirable– Yahoo Messenger or MSN Messenger

Advantages (Ergonomics)– Two keyboards

VNC not as “fast” an experience and RDC solution


VPP Experience Summary (cont)

Privacy

One of pair can “mute and munch”

Often program for 5 hours at a time


Empirical Research

In the Fall 2001 semester a structured experiment was conducted in a graduate class, Object-Oriented Languages and Systems, taught by Dr Edward Gehringer at NCSU. This course introduces students to object technology and covers object-oriented analysis and design, Smalltalk, and Java.

All used Java


Empirical Research

Brian Hanks

Phd Work

University of California, Santa Cruz

[email protected]

Modified VNC to collect driver/navigator

Collocated Pairs, then Switch

Testing of Null hyphothesis


Summary and Conclusions

Not much good empirical work exists.

VPP is really a sub area of Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW)… much studied

David Lieb’s “Distributed Cognition”

Distributed Cognition Lab at UCSD

VPP is fun. Reduces “Isolation”

Productivity gains are large


Bibliography

http://rockfish-cs.cs.unc.edu/pubs/XPU-03.pdf

Tristan Richardson, Quentin Staord-Fraser, Kenneth R. Wood, and Andy Hopper. Virtual network computing. IEEE Internet Computing, 2(1):33{38, January-February 1998.

WikiWikiWeb. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiWeb. See virtual pair programming discussion at http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?VirtualPairProgramming.


Bibliography

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?VirtualPairProgramming

http://www.pairprogramming.com/csed.pdf

http://www.xp2003.org/slides/15.pdf

http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/~brianh/PairProgramBib.html

http://www.ot2001.org/scripts/display.pl/151-leibs.xml

Technology

Virtual Pair Programming