[obie]

Absolutely. It took me four years of misstarts and agony (2000-2004) to really understand and get good at pair programming. During that time I mostly kept the faith about it since I was a zealous XP advocate, but had a large measure of doubt about its true effectiveness.

It took working with talented pair-programmers at ThoughtWorks to really make it click.

[plinkplonk]

"During that time I mostly kept the faith about it since I was a zealous XP advocate, but had a large measure of doubt about its true effectiveness."

Revealing sentence.

You "had a large measure of doubt about its effectiveness" but since you were a "zealous advocate" (of something you were doubtful about!) you mostly "kept the faith".

Sounds pretty hypocritical and manipulative. How are we to believe your "zealous" declarations now?

No wonder agilists are often dismissed as "One True Way" religious fanatics.