Comment by andrei_says_

Depends on what exactly you mean by pair programming. Two people sharing the same keyboard and screen and watching the other type is horror movie level stuff to me. I go from a competent typist at 140wpm or so, remembering at least some basic syntax, knowing the most common editor shortcuts etc. to a blubbering idiot 5 year old.

Sharing an office where you can’t look at each others screen unless you walk over to help troubleshoot or design a specific feature is probably my favorite mode of work by far. Especially if it’s a small hyper-competent team with a diverse set of expertise but basic generalist knowledge to navigate the entire design at a high level.

Being able to jump on a whiteboard with zero latency mid-debugging session (even trying to move to a spare conference room) is also great.

This also lets you devise team communication in a way where you can signal you are in focus mode vs not and others can gauge the importance of their ask based on that signal and knowing precisely what everyone is actually working on that day.

That said, the absolute worst possible way to collaborate is video conferencing and shared screens. Give me a shoulder hoverer over that any day.

No the person you've replied to, but for me I just find it frustrating. When I'm not the one typing, I always find the other person moving slower than I can think, not entirely getting what I want to tell them ("no, line 47, not 53 -- no, the foobar function call isn't the problem, it's the 4th argument to barbaz... no no, no that one... GAH). Maybe we can chalk this up to "communication problems", and I should have taken a pause to talk about communication with my pair partner.

I dunno. I've just always felt much less productive with someone else there. I don't view programming as a social or collaborative activity. Building software can be collaborative, but when I'm sitting down to do implementation, collaboration slows me down, and I find it very frustrating and unproductive.