I find it is slightly slower (maybe 20%) than two individuals alone but the quality is quite a bit higher and the effect of this higher quality compounds over time (i.e. less tech debt -> fewer bugs, faster development on future code).

Im quite credulous of Kent Beck's claim that when categorizing the last ~15 bugs on a project with pairs and singles he found that all 15 were in code merged by an individual rather than a pair.

If it were an application you could just install I think everybody would use it. It demands psychological safety though, which most teams dont have, and is becoming less common these days.

Does this mean you as a pair were as productive as both of you individuals combined? Or that the pair was as productive as one individual?

Pair programming is twice as expensive so it needs to be twice a productive (quality, LOC, whatever) to make sense I guess.

I usually prefer to be navigator than driver. It's the navigator that does the high level thinking. The one at the keyboard is the one who's usually better at typing and writing out the design patterns that are agreed upon. Of course we did swap roles routinely, maybe several times a day. Oh and to top it off we switched pairing partners every week or two. It was a brutal experiment but I learned a lot and I'd say it was a great success.

Have you tried plugging in a second keyboard and taking over where necessary? I do a lot of remote work in which my colleague and I work on the same computer and it's quite useful for either of us to jump in with our own keyboard (and mouse). It does take a bit of occasional verbal negotiation to agree on who really knows what to do (and can do it fastest) but if you communicate well then it's pretty easy.

I find the less dominant person just switches off, stops thinking and just becomes a keyboard with about 20x the latency and 10% the speed and accuracy.

I find that working with people who are smarter than I am helps a lot with this.

"no the other one, down a bit, no the one above, no go back..."

for me it's not that I think faster, it's just that I will check 10 things really fast and exclude the "no it can't be there" things - because that's usually where it is. So if somebody else is holding the mouse and keyboard, I would then have to convince them that these things that they are convinced are fine need checking.

I really hate this work of convincing them, because it's much faster to check it first and explain why it was a good idea later once I've fixed the problem.

Funny you should mention it. I have different computers with different keyboard layouts--including for some reason[0] modifier keys on only the left side being different on one.

[0] That's the gaming PC I play StarCraft 2 on and I found it simpler to always leave it in one mode than switching back and forth.

Because it would be in the gutter in the first place?

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.

This fad died out along with 0% money.

it's like 9 women giving birth to a whole baby in just one month.

Same. It seems the coding part of my brain and the communicating are mutually exclusive

I wonder if it’s related to the phenomena of some people having a ‘narrator’ in their head or, like me, there’s no voice and it takes effort to convert abstract thoughts to sentences

So true. I interviewed at one where a half day was spent pair-programming with one of the team's devs doing TDD: write a test, make it green, refactor.

Most remote work gigs are basically this.

In my experience, to piddle around is to fool about, while to simply piddle is, indeed, to potty. So based on that, I see where you're coming from.

In my experience, to piddle around is to fool about, while to simply piddle is, indeed, to potty. So based on that, I see where you're coming from.

I read it the same way and assumed they were piddling in the garden to add nitrogen to their compost.

Thanks, I like this a lot