[jacques_chester]

In my experience of the past 5 years: yes. Substantially better idea-to-production latency, given a high minimum standard for releaseability.

Little's Law is instructive. There are two ways to increase throughput in a system. One is to reduce latency. The other is to increase in-process inventory. They have very different dynamics.

[scarface74]

Most software development like everything else is a combination of inspiration and perspiration. How much time is spent in average day coming up with “ideas” versus just doing the work?

Or putting it in production terms, the number of people coming up with ideas for the iPhone in Cupertino is dwarfed by the number of people building them in China.

[jacques_chester]

I'm not sure what you're driving at here.

[scarface74]

That you don’t need pair programming to do much of the grunt work that’s involved in development. Do you really need help making sure you write a for loop correctly?

[jacques_chester]

I do if I'm about to do it wrong, or if something other than a loop might be better, or to write the test that drives it out, or to show me a trick I didn't know, or to get me unstuck, or to tell me there's a library function that lets us skip a loop, or ...

Is your argument that I don't know how pairing works? Because my estimate is that I have around 8,000 hours practicing it at this point, which I suspect may be 8,000 hours or so more than your own professional pairing experience. It's possible that I've been sleep-walking through the whole thing, but unlikely. One of the dozens of intelligent, helpful people I've worked with would've pointed it out.

[scarface74]

I’ve been writing code for over 30 years including two assembly language instruction sets (one before going to high school), and C on 4 platforms. I’ve been using my preferred language C# for a decade and JavaScript since it was introduced by Netscape in the 90s. I think I’m capable of writing decent performant code without pairing....

[jodrellblank]

I think I’m capable of writing decent performant code without pairing....

You think you are, but you've never tested this thought and scoff at the idea that you could be wrong, despite being told from experienced people who have tested it that you are wrong?

Is your argument seriously "I've never done it, but it doesn't work" to someone saying "I've done lots of it and it works well"?

[jacques_chester]

In my anger I turned this into a measuring contest.

I think what you're reading is me saying "it's impossible to write good code without a pair", which (a) isn't true and (b) isn't what I said.

What I'm reading is that you say pairing is strictly less effective than soloing, which (a) isn't true and (b) isn't true.

If we were talking about professionally programming in assembly language, I would take your views seriously because of your relevant experience in that matter. In doing so I might not agree and I would very likely be wrong, but I would acknowledge your expertise on that topic.

What I ask is the same courtesy when it comes to pairing.