Ask HN: How to collaborate on small projects?

[mordaren]

I want to improve at collaborating with less skilled people. In school projects, I often end up "hijacking" the project writing most of the code on my own. Not optimal.

I have been thinking about delegating interfaces that we implement independently. But, in a dynamic project where interfaces get outdated, careful planning often comes off as a time sink. It gets especially difficult to motivate (and carry out) when the project is small.

Also, pair programming tends to result in me just giving instructions on what to write - line by line.

[allthesethings]

When the skill gap is too large and the junior is too inexperienced(and with school projects we're talking about a skill gap that could be "my first day ever programming" versus "2000+ hours over a few years") there isn't going to be collaboration going on, just mentoring and handholding. But there are things you can get out of that process too, in setting up an environment where they could get up to speed, are given appropriate forms of challenge and encouragement, and don't fall into typical student tropes of procrastinating and leaning on you while not really understanding the material.

Here is a particularly devious strategy: write simple code that you already know works - nothing too abstracted, just the most direct route to a solution you can come up with - and then add a bug to it and ask your partners for help, so that they have to read and debug your code and work really hard to understand what's going on(i.e. build up all the most fundamental programming skills). Then "discover" the fix at the last minute to get the grade, if they run out of time. Everyone gets the grade, plus you will have partners that are slightly more competent each time.

[mordaren]

Thanks for your reply. That's actually not a bad idea for longer collaborations, I'll give it a shot when I'm in a larger project.

[ahdroit]

help others find their own talent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld60IQ3jxw0

[rs86]

You are actually technically limited if you can not collaborate.

[mordaren]

Do you suppose I'd ask for help if I did not know that?