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Engineer Explains: Mob programming is not what you think it is

Antonija Bilic Arar

We've asked experienced engineers to share how they would explain some tech terminology at three levels of experience - from junior developer to CTO.

Why would you want five developers to sit in front of one computer and code when you can have those five developers sit in front of five computers and to five times the work?!

Isn’t that just – inefficient?!

Mob programming sounds just like that – five people doing the work of one developer, but it’s actually completely the opposite.

Mob programming is a collaborative approach where a team of software engineers (mob) works on the same thing on one computer and does programming together. It has its roots in pair programming. The focus is on the quality of code and learning, and some of the benefits of mob programming are reducing context switching and waiting times.

Learn more in this video:

For a first-hand account from a team of engineers practicing mob programming for the first time, read this: Why would anyone do something as absurd as mob programming?

More videos from the Engineer Explains series:
Feature Flags Explained
JAMstack Explained
Observability Explained
Large Language Models Explained
DevOps Explained
DevRel Explained
Network APIs Explained
Verifiable Credentials Explained


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