[isaacremuant]

Slack is no different than the desk if you're using it like that.

You can hop as easily to huddle as you'd do an interruption. Of course, a junior interrupting ALL the time in real life would be a terrible thing so you definitely need to strike a balance.

But I see most arguments for office is better from people who just don't know how to communicate effectively through tools and potentially are bad at cross location team collab, which happens all the time in big companies.

[landswipe]

I'd argue remote is way better, if you share screens over google meet or similar it is far far better than physically sitting around a single workstation. Also, by default it encourages respect of people's time rather than tapping people on a shoulder or an interrupting them (don't get me started on open plan offices).

[paradox460]

Vscode live share beats the snot out of traditional pair programming. I can view where my colleagues are on the side while looking up something else, and vice versa. If a colleague is writing a function or something and needs to know how some system works, I can go and look it up while they're working, and not break their flow. Traditional pair programming, with a single terminal, makes this impossible