[mlloydw]

I used to do a fair amount over LiveShare and we would adapt depending on the relationship we had. It got more interesting the more level we were.

One of the more successful patterns that came out was to: talk about the goal, write out the code that acted as interfaces between the two of us, and then split up and tackle two things at once. That might have been code vs tests, backend vs frontend, migration vs adapting existing code. We would often then swap and discuss what we'd done (and we might be asking little questions as we go to help refine each other's approach), add improvements or plug gaps and then finally give it a good end-to-end run through with some exploration.

We were working together on the problem, asynchronously, and you'd be surprised how little there were occasions where a big assumption at the beginning was missed and made us go off in different directions. This was nearly always caught early as we talked whilst we worked on our separate areas and had a quick glance at what the other person was writing. I'm convinced that we caught them faster than if I was alone as we had the opportunity to think about the problem from multiple perspectives at once.