Anyone got any experience of teams doing pair programming where there is a mixed IDE environment? I’m a long time IntelliJ user, others use Eclipse, which you may have heard of.
In my mind pair programming involves a lot of passing the keyboard between the programmers. But every time I get the keyboard I grind to a halt as I don’t know to do anything anymore. (It’s like suddenly I’m an idiot!)
Now I could, probably should, learn my way round Eclipse. (Not starting a holy war here about relative merits.) But I wonder if anyone else has got an opinion?
I have not done this in a multi-IDE environment. But pairing is, to my mind, far and away the best way to learn IDE features. So you should come up to speed quickly on Eclipse, and your colleagues, likewise, should get a handle on IntelliJ in short order. Both of you will become better versed in both environments – and that’s a good position from which to settle on a team IDE, should you choose to do so.
By comparison with other means of learning, pairing teaches you the features that are useful to you (or your pair, who probably has a similar set of needs). You learn almost by osmosis; as your pair uses a feature you may find yourself asking, “how did you do that?” or “what did you just do?” This is teaching you the features you need, exactly when you need them.
In your situation, there may be additional value: you may find yourself wanting a feature that your IDE offers; your pair may never have encountered it (but it might be in Eclipse, too). So you spend a minute tracking down that feature, and now both of you have learned new (and useful) functionality of the IDE.