[MaulingMonkey]

I suspect that it's the kind of thing that pays off... sometimes.

There are times when the machine is the bottleneck. Multiple monitors, SSDs, many cores, multiple machines... and I still end up waiting for (re)builds because I touched a header on each machine, trying to tackle a problem.

Having a whole mob blocked on those recompiles is going to be hideously wasteful.

On the other hand, there are times when I've "mob programmed" without knowing the term. The typical pattern was someone would loudly "WTF?", that'd pique the interest of a nearby programmer, and then a 3rd would be roped in via questions, as we knew they'd taken over the relevant mess of code... often oscillating between all eyes on the same bit of code, and spinning off to launch our own investigations into related bits...