How to manage pair- programming code check in user identification?

Question

How do you identify users when a programming pair checks in code? I heard a complaint that, often a junior dev will be at the keyboard, using his/her account, but is not going to be the best person to ask questions about the code being checked in (the more senior dev is likely to have the best answer).

Is this really a problem? Seems like a programming team could think of some way to identify pairs and get the necessary information in their version control software.

I also think they're not benefiting from this process if both programmers don't know what their code does.

Answer 1

In the worst case scenario, the Jr Dev doesn't really understand the code and tells you to ask his partner about it. This isn't really a world ending scenario. It does, however, suggest that you're doing pair programming wrong. One of the benefits of pair programming is to facilitate knowledge transfer between developers - if your seniors are telling the juniors to just write code without explaining it, you've lost this benefit.

To mitigate this, you could require meaningful commit messages that explain what a particular code change did & the reasoning behind it. If you're afraid somebody might forget or leave the company, making a note of who they paired with in the message won't hurt.