从google reader上看到的，挺逗的一篇
http://jacquesmattheij.com/A+tale+of+two+programmers
A tale of two programmers
When MSX and Atari ST were still 'hot', I contracted for a short while for a game company in the Netherlands, called Aackosoft, in Leiderdorp, a small town near The Hague. The reason it was only short was because the company failed spectacularly (the financial director came in one night and started shredding documents, I just packed my bag and left). Other than the management, the people working there were great.
We wrote interesting programs, the pay was OK (assuming you got paid), and the amount of knowledge floating around there was amazing. The designers were as good as I've ever seen, given the limited display capabilities of the various platforms available. For me, two people stood out: Steve and Chris, both from the UK. Because most of us had a very long commute, we slept 'on campus', one section of the building was something that is best described as a college dorm. After work we'd get together, order pizza or Thai food, talk shop and play games, sometimes our own games (Indy500, FlightDeck), sometimes those by competitors (does anybody even remember Gauntlet?).
Steve and Chris were as unalike as I've ever seen. Steve would toss out reams of code, sometimes creating the skeleton of a game in a few manic nights of coding and then he'd run out of steam to become slow as molasses. At roughly this point in time, Chris would enter the picture. He'd take the pile of work that Steve had done, and bit by bit, he'd clean it up and make it reliable and efficient. They knew each other so well that they didn't actually discuss the code much, it just got passed back and forth in this fashion until the job was done, usually in record time.
Their secret was obviously their complimentary characters and the fact that they'd grown up together, and had gotten to rely on the other guy 'having your back', as opposed to spending endless hours on transferring the knowledge Chris had been through this so many times that he knew quite well what to expect.
Today we'd probably call this 'pair programming', but it was pair programming in a way that was far more than the sum of its parts. Chris wouldn't be able to come up with an original work if his life depended on it. Steve would not be able to finish a job if you threatened to fire him. But as a team, they worked out splendid. They typically had their releases based on the same storyboards ready before we'd had the skeleton fleshed out.
Over the years, Steve had collected a whole encyclopedia of useful chunks of assembly code and he would beat these in shape just long enough for Chris to find his way.
Co-dependency amongst programmers. I've never seen it afterwards, and I don't really expect to see it ever again, it was one of those small things that remain as unique on the day that I first came across it as it is today.
But what I have seen is 'halves'. I've seen Steve's (I'm fairly strongly in his 'camp' when it comes to personality, when the engine works, I usually find it very hard to motivate myself to continue, that was the interesting bit for me), and I've seen Chris's.
Typically they wander around big companies looking for their soulmate, but they never ever run into them in a way that they recognize each other, or manage to hit it off on a personal level. But it makes me wonder if there isn't a use for a 'programmer dating service', where the Steve's and the Chris's of this world can meet up and achieve miracles that they alone would not be able to realize.
中文原文地址
http://www.aqee.net/2011/03/22/a-tale-of-two-programmers/
当MSX和Atari ST还很‘火’的时候，我在荷兰的一家叫做Aackosoft的游戏公司里短暂的就职过一段时间，这个公司位于Leiderdorp —— 离海牙不远的一个小镇。之所以短暂，原因是这个公司神奇的倒闭了(一天晚上财务主管一进来就开始粉碎各种文件，我只好拿起公文包离开了)。除了管理方面的问题外，这里工作的人都很不错。
要开发的程序非常有趣，这里的薪水还行(假如你是拿薪水过日子的)，开发过程伴随着大量的知识学问，让我惊叹不已。这里的设计人员都非常的优秀，他们让这不通用的显示效果能够在各种平台上使用。对于我，有两个人格外的吸引我：Steve 和 Chris，他们都是英国人。我们大部分人下班后都会一起坐一段很长的路程，我们住在“校园宿舍”里 —— 因为对这栋建筑的这个部分最好的描述就是校园宿舍。下班后我们就待在一起，我们叫了匹萨或泰国食品，聊天、玩游戏，有时是我们自己的游戏(Indy500, FlightDeck)，有时是竞争对手的(是否还有人记得Gauntlet？)。
Steve 和 Chris 这两个人极不相似。Steve 讨厌大量的编码工作，他有时会疯狂的花上几个昼夜的时间把一个游戏的框架搭建起来，之后他就会像泄漏气的脾气，行动慢慢腾腾，像个蜗牛。而大概就在这个节骨眼上，Chris入场了。他捡起Steve已经完成的那一大堆代码，一个字节一个字节的，规整清理，使之可靠、高效。他们之间是如此了解，根本不需要讨论哪段代码是干什么、为什么这样写，只是用这种方式来回交替的进行，直到任务完成，通常都是迅速顺利的搞定。
这其中的奥秘显然是得益于他们值得称赞的性格，长期共处培养出来的融洽，以及形成的一种依赖于对方的习惯，而不是相反的用大量的时间来相互传授自己的知识和用意。Chris 已经无数次的这样配合Steve，已经十分清楚的知道Steve想干什么。
如今我们也许可以称这为“结对编程”，而这种结对的方式产生的效果远超了他们两个作为单独个体的总和。Chris 如果一直依赖于这种工作方式，那他将不会有自己的原创作品。而Steve一旦失去了Chris，将不能完整的完成任何一个工作。可作为一个团队，他们做出了出色的东西。就像是他们在搭起骨架，填充内容之前，脑海中有了共同的图纸，这是他们能成功完成任务的基础。
数年里，Steve已经积攒了犹如大百科全书那样丰富的有用的程序代码，这些足够Chris用来发现他的思维轨迹。
这是程序员中的合作依赖。之后我再也没有遇到这种情况，我也并不是真的想盼望看到这样的组合出现，这只是那些日子里能让我感到独特、至今回忆的一件小事，就像发生在昨天。
我所看到的是一种‘热情’。我看到了Steve的 (从个性上来讲，我更喜欢他，但当我发现有趣的事情时，我却不能像他那样富有激情的工作)。我看到了Chris的。
他们曾徘徊在各大公司里寻找他们的精神伙伴，但从来没有遇到这样能够相知、能超出工作范畴、从个人角度上相互接受的人。这让我产生奇想，也许应该有个“程序员约会服务系统”，像Steve和Chris这样的人能够遇到一起，一起合作创造出他们各自独自根本无法想到的奇迹来。
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