[dgb23]

Both code reviews and pair programming can be very useful if they serve a specific purpose.

Getting someone up to speed with unfamiliar code, disentangling hairy code so it becomes clearer, hunting down bugs or finding unknown unknowns such as bugs or unnecessary complexity.

However in many cases not looking at the screen when doing these kinds of things is more helpful. It's often more beneficial to build a mental model in your head and then riff off each other. Rather drawing things on a board or writing down stuff in a markdown file, explaining things in simple terms, than actually coding or reading actual code.

Not sure if that still counts as pair programming or code reviewing but this free form way of talking about code is very effective.