Mob Programming in College, Retro Edition: Prof Ben Kovitz on What He Learned from a Semester of Mobbing

The Mob Mentality Show

📚 How does Mob Programming really work in the college classroom? In this episode of the Mob Mentality Show, we reconnect with Professor Ben Kovitz to explore the raw lessons, surprising wins, and tough challenges from a full semester of mob programming in a college software design course.
Ben shares what happened when he replaced traditional lectures with real-world collaboration. The results? Students developed practical coding skills, improved their communication, and learned to work together as a true software team—less ego, more shared ownership. From early wins with small group design exercises to complex struggles with C++ memory management and GUI libraries, Ben walks us through what worked, what bombed, and what he’d change next time.
We break down:

• Why mob programming created stronger learning and better teamwork than expected

• How structured rotations got everyone participating and avoiding common pairing pitfalls

• The highs and lows of using C++ and Qt in a classroom setting

• The unexpected power of students struggling through real software challenges together

• Lessons on undo implementation, design patterns, and memory management from hands-on mobbing

• How a semester wasn’t enough time to fully teach long-term code stewardship and habitable design

• What might scale—or fall apart—if mob programming were applied to larger classes

• How this classroom experience mirrors the real world: legacy code, fast feedback, technical debt, and learning as you go

Whether you’re a software engineer, an educator, or someone passionate about team learning, this episode gives you actionable insights into mob programming as both a teaching tool and a real-world development practice.
We also explore questions like:

• Can mob programming work with 30+ students?

• How can solo work and group collaboration coexist in the best learning environments?

• What does it take to create code that’s not just correct—but actually pleasant to maintain?

If you’re interested in agile learning, collaborative coding, and pushing the boundaries of how we teach and work as software teams, this episode is for you.
FYI: Video and show notes to be posted here in the next day or so.