Pair-Programming, Keyboard, and Mice
While pairing today with one of the developers from our team, we decided not to let the mice to distract us, and unplugged it. That was awesome - within seconds we diagnosed ourselves with a mouse-have-to-touch addiction symptom. Every single moment a hand was reaching to the sacred location two things happened:
- The mouse wasn't working
- The brain was realizing that there's an alternative - keyboard
It probably took an hour to digest the great loss, but we started to rely on R# and keyboard shortcuts to do the job. I can definitely see the difference between the start and the finish.
The other challenge is how to practice something similar with a person who is pairing remotely - you can ask to disconnect the mice and drop it to the bin, but it's not always working. A typical reply would be "Sure! What for? I simply won't touch it". And 3 seconds after that you see the sneaky mouse making it's way from one corner of the screen to the opposite one (or worse, expressing the thoughts of the confused 'master', while trying to thing what is needed to be done).
So I can't unplug the beast, can I then mute it? Wow, that would be nice, an application to temporarily disable mouse. What do you think? (This is where I solicit for a utility name).
Confession: I am not using mouse for a while while developing, and the whole purpose of the experiment was to prove to my team mates that they can do with no problems at all. It's all in the head, Pinky, all in the head.
Reminds me words of Morpheus from Matrix movie in context to the importance of the mice to be able to work: "Do you think it's the air that you breath? Hmmm. Interesting...."