| 100% agree with pg on this (and no I don't always agree with everything)... Most problems in life are as a result of miscommunications and associated false assumptions, whether they be in business, marriages, or friendships. Anything you can do to increase the fidelity of communication quite simply: must be done. Before I read the news about this I was about to write my first ever blog post about the symbiosis between DNA health and pair programming - the link between the two... have a guess?! Quality of communication. You see there is ongoing debate amongst the Agile software development community as to what methodologies are most helpful; test-driven-development, refactoring, code reviews, static code analysis... I maintain that that start-ups have the edge mainly because there is more pairing (pair-programming / pair-design / pair-refactoring / pair-testing) than there currently is in most software shops - and the reason this is so effective is the boost it gives to communication... Now the DNA angle you ask, well in 2009 a team won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for proving that chronic stress inhibits the brain from releasing Telomerase that repairs the Telomeres that protect the end of your chromosomes during cell-division (crossing over). Guess what causes most workplace stress - miscommunication... and in software also the fact that you are often unfortunately forced to work alone. Start-ups force you to work together and that is why you are healthier and live longer and, incidentally, write better software ;-) |