[bitwize]

Pair programming flummoxes me because I find it significantly harder to concentrate when someone's watching. It's like having that execrable old Visual Basic feature where it flags up syntax errors if you cursor off a line, forcing you to correct the errors before moving to a different line. Except now implemented with a smelly human flagging up the errors!

I get it. XP, and Agile in general, is all about relying less on individual programmers' focus on the task and more on external checks (a shoulder surfer and automated tests). The revolution of software development in the 21st century is building more effective teams rather than relying on super-productive individuals (the fabled 10x engineers). But I don't have to like working that way, and I don't.

[nico]

My personal experience with pair programming is that I first was very intimidated by it and instinctively hated it

Then, it slowly creeped up at work, and I noticed that initially, most people seemed uncomfortable with it. But, if we were able to build trust and get to a place where we weren't judging each other, just trying to make progress with the task, then things would magically flow and we could solve things that each person individually had been stuck on

We then mostly kept it to a weekly activity, in which we could tackle either specific tickets from a certain list that no-one was actively working on, or on specific things that someone would bring up and needed help with

I believe it's probably not the way to work every single moment, but it is definitely a very powerful and useful tool