> But it was of course a complete non-starter for pair programming. After having tasted Visual Studio (± Code) Live Sharing, there was simply no going back.
Interesting that the straw that broke the camel's back for the author was pair programming. I've been pairing pretty regularly for a long time now, and everybody using their preferred editor/IDE was never a problem. Live editing the same code is something we played around with every now and then, but there wasn't real utility. One person sharing their screen is pretty much how I've done it for the last five years or so. If we want to switch who's driving, we just commit.
Edit: In fact, my experience is that it has never been so _easy_ for everyone to use different editors. CLI toolchains, editorconfig, auto formatters and linters, LSP, ...
I have a lot of experience pair programming and I definitely find that minimizing the friction to switch driver is a huge deal. Especially when knowledge-sharing or mentoring across experience divides, being able to take over for a few seconds but then fluidly hand control back just makes it not feel like a big deal for either person.
In non-remote jobs I would always set up my station with two keyboards and two mice for this reason. Now that I work remote I always keep VS code configured for the codebase and use it for pairing. Even though my personal editor is, yes, emacs.
Author here: the neat thing about Live Share in VSCode/MSVC is that both people can type at the same time, both can use the shared command line and shared debugger, and both can navigate the shared project files. Independently, of course, with each on their own color scheme and keyboard setup.
I don't want to oversell it. It's not perfect, and has loads of bugs. But the fact that we can refractor the code base with two cursors simultaneously, is actually super powerful. Often one person is typing while the other is cleaning up a typo a few characters ago. It feels like symbiosis. It's really good.
Interesting that the straw that broke the camel's back for the author was pair programming. I've been pairing pretty regularly for a long time now, and everybody using their preferred editor/IDE was never a problem. Live editing the same code is something we played around with every now and then, but there wasn't real utility. One person sharing their screen is pretty much how I've done it for the last five years or so. If we want to switch who's driving, we just commit.
Edit: In fact, my experience is that it has never been so _easy_ for everyone to use different editors. CLI toolchains, editorconfig, auto formatters and linters, LSP, ...