Obie recently wrote an article that caught our attention, 10 Reasons Pair Programming Is Not For the Masses and I wanted to comment on a few of the points that he makes. We’ve considered this approach here at Black Ninja and we’ve even gone as far as trying it out for specific projects, but we haven’t committed ourselves the way HashRocket has (its probably safe to say that not many companies have). It definitely has its advantages for development, more specifically by increasing productivity and reducing the output of poor quality code and we can see the value in it.

10. Most software managers don’t want to invest in the necessary hardware

This is a good point with a great ‘gentle rebuttal’ by Brian Guthrie that you can check out here. I think a balance needs to be had, between getting the best tool for the job and not spending $5000 on a developer workstation. There are many contributing factors, but the bottom line is this: most software development shops don’t really take the time to understand the toolset that’s needed by a developer to really be efficient at what they do. That’s the core of what Obie is getting at. Here at Black Ninja we recognize that performance, space and comfort are important to us and we do our best to keep on top of that. While we still have some work to do to get where we’d like to be in terms of hardware and infrastructure, our current setup looks like this:

We all have 24″ iMacs, Razer DeathAdder gaming mice, Wrath of the Lich King mouse pads, (made by SteelSeries – their mouse pad product line is the best out there!), mac keyboards, comfortable desks, mesh chairs and a 4 shelf Red bookshelf for our geeky computer books. Each workstation is also equipped with a whiteboard for jotting ideas down, and we encourage our employees to decorate their space with whatever motivates them most.

I’m in total agreement with Obie, nothing is more frustrating for a developer than working in an environment where decent hardware is difficult to justify. It it makes sense for our business and helps improve our productivity, then it becomes a part of our work life. This also extends into the toolsets we use to get the work done. This ranges from things like Pivotal Tracker to Freshbooks, you can read the entire list here.

6. Most software people don’t understand pair productivity

I think this is a fair statement and one that holds true for a great number of software shops. As Obie outlines, it’s easy to equate two people doing a single task as half the work done, but in realty, it’s a lot more productive and the quality of code is a lot better. The difficulty in our mind comes down to what Obie describes as wasted time:

To the average programmer, having to pair full-time means they won’t get to waste time during the day on Reddit or Hacker News.

I’m not sure if keeping up to date on current trends should be considered a waste of time, as long as it’s not taking up the majority of one’s day. There is real value in following a few blogs and reading up on what your twitter followers are talking about. My twitter account specifically contains no personal content but rather, a well thought out range of people that tweet about SharePoint including MVP’s and other consultants that are in the same line of work. The same holds true for everyone here at Black Ninja. I find it intriguing that HashRocket can keep their employees productive all day, every day, without interruption but I also recognize that their business model is slightly different than ours. I think as Black Ninja evolves this is definitely something we’d like to try. Our commitment to excellence will always be our bottom line and if pair programming helps us get there, then it’s definitely something to consider carefully.

A huge thanks to Obie for taking the time to outline how things work at HaskRocket!

Powershell’d – How to Powershell Your Way with SQL Server 2008

If you have used any kind of shell scripting before, you know how it can help automate tasks quicker and more efficiently. Powershell, a scripting language that leverages Microsoft .NET Framework, is finally supported in SQL Server. This session will dive deep into how you can use Powershell to create, maintain, manage and troubleshoot your SQL Server databases. This session will also cover differences between using Powershell in SQL Server 2005 and 2008.

Leveraging Telerik WebControls in Your SharePoint Projects

Telerik currently offers a full suite of powerful UI controls which seamlessly integrate into SharePoint and help developers build feature rich and highly responsive user interfaces for MOSS and WSS. In addition to their standard suite, Telerik offers a free version of the built in rich text editor that is cross browser compatible and offers support for the macintosh platform. This session will walk you through the steps for building SharePoint Web Parts and Custom Application Pages with specific code examples that leverage Telerik to provide a richer end user experience. We’ll cover a specific subset of the Telerik Web Controls including: RadGrid, RadComboBox, RadAjax and RadCalendar and I’ll also demonstrate briefly how to setup the Telerik RadEditor for SharePoint.

This event is a great chance for local developers and MVP’s to mingle and meet. There are lots of great sessions to attend with some really good content. If you’re interested in learning more please check out the DevTeach site or contact us for more information.

We are offering a special discount for Black Ninja Software visitors, so be sure to check that out!

The Ninjas @ Black Ninja Software

When we’re ready to get paid, we use freshbooks.

We use Google Apps for business for email, information sharing and security.

Blogging is important to us, so we use wordpress.

We update often. Twitter helps us in that department.

Google Analytics helps us check up on how we’re doing.

Our business would never get out there without a domain.

To help us keep in touch with one another, we yammer what we’re currently working on.

We use telerik web controls for all our ASP.NET development to make our pages look pretty.

Git version control keeps our code safe.

We’re so busy working on everyone else’s infrastructure, we don’t have time to manage our own, so Rackspace takes care of that for us.

Redgate makes it possible to tune our code so we produce the best performing pages possible.

For all our UI mockup and design, we absolutely love using Balsamiq Mockups For Desktop!

Pivotal Tracker helps us keep organized and manages our morning scrums!

And last but not least, we’d be lost without our MacBook’s, iMac’s, iPhones and Apple TV!