  Agile software development has been widespread adopted. One well-known agile
approach is eXtreme Programming (XP) where pair programming (PP) is a relevant
practice. Although various aspects of PP have been studied, we have not found,
under a traditional model of PP, studies that examine the impact of using an
IDE tool support. In an attempt to obtain a better understanding of the impact
of using an IDE, we present the results of a controlled experiment that expose
the influence on quality, measured as the number of defects injected per hour,
and cost, measured as the time necessary to complete programming assignments,
of pair and solo programming with and without the use of an IDE. For quality,
our findings suggest that the use of an IDE results in significantly higher
defect injection rates (for both pairs and solos) when the programming
assignment is not very complicated. Nevertheless, defect injection rates seem
to decrease when pairs work on more complicated programming assignments
irrespective of the tool support used. For cost, the programming assignment
significantly affects the time necessary to complete the assignment. Finally,
both aspects (quality and cost) are affected in a similar manner when either
pair or solo programming is used.

Software Engineering