Pair programming and test-driven development are some of the practices that are most often talked about and least often actually understood. So I’ve decided to undertake the task to teach myself to program a simple, yet realistic problem with a pair programming partner. The goal is to create an entertaining and realistic performance that portrays what it feels like to work like this.I’ve been extremely lucky. I’ve found not one, but two programmers that have been willing to train enough with me to make a smooth performance of a pair programming session. The result is the Java EE Spike Kata. My colleagues in Steria, Anders Karlsen and Ivar Nilsen have been great to work with. Between us, we’ve showed the kata at three conferences, and more are coming.Here is the performance at JavaZone 2010 by Anders Karlsen and myself. Make sure to watch the video in full screen mode as there will be LOTS of code.Some things to watch for when you’re watching a (paired) code kata: How are we working together? How often are we changing who’s at the keyboard? What will the person who’s not at the keyboard be doing? How do we progress from one test to the next? When do we decide to modify an existing test and when do we decide to add a new one? How much of the test do we write before we start modifying the production code? How are we writing the production code? How often are we refactoring existing code? How are we using the IDE? What tricks do we use to take advantage of the code completion facilities? How often do we use the mouse and how often do we use the keyboard? I also hope to be putting up the video of me and Ivar Nilsen at the TelecomCity conference in Sweden. As we’d both practiced even more for that performance, I think it’s even smoother than the JavaZone performance. Enjoy!(Kudos to Cisco Norway, formerly Tandberg, for excellent filming services at JavaZone. And thank you to Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin for turning me on to code katas in the first place) Java