IMO this is a very wrong way to look at pairing. It's not about one person being incapable of delivering a solution on their own, it's that having multiple perspectives on the code will lead to a higher quality and more well designed product.

You could use the same argument you're using to say we shouldn't do code reviews, because we should trust that every developer is competent.

Also, at least in my experience, design isn't primarily or even mostly confined to an initial design phase. Most of the 'design' of a problem occurs when you're actually coding.

Fundamentally I tend to think that people who insist pairing is ok to impose on people think everyone is like them, and don't see that it's forcing out people with different ways of thinking and processing problems. Ultimately I think it's bordering on discriminatory in that it's selecting for extroverts who don't burn out by the extensive amount of interpersonal contact pairing forces rather than selecting for results.

For my part I will never work somewhere that imposes pairing. I'd rather leave software development altogether than suffer through that, because it's not worth the exhaustion and the reduction in throughput other than occasionally (e.g. while training someone or walking people through a prototype). Thankfully I have the luxury of not having to take that shit.

I think it's one of those things where some people are good at it / enjoy it. Some people don't.

As a paradigm, I think pairing is better. Two talented, smart people who are able to work together will produce a better solution than one person alone. As you rotate pairs, context on the code base is shared and permeates the team faster. New onboards get up to speed at a remarkable pace--far better than the "uhhh so checkout the code. Mess around, see if you can get things running. Idk good luck" process I usually see on non-pairing teams.

I've seen a lot of code over the years developed in silos by talented people. The work gets done. But the teams I've been on that embrace pairing produce better code, the team has better shared context, and there's a real joy to the work. This becomes disrupted when someone who does not like pairing joins the team, and actively resists the process, hoarding context and cowboy-ing solutions off on their own.

If I ever run a company, I will select for engineers who aren't just comfortable with pairing, but actively enjoy it.

I think companies can perfectly well operate with lone wolf engineers. But you have to add a lot of process to wrap that mentality--code reviews, design sessions, context share-outs, multiple people singing off on PRs. These are things you can largely do away with if you're doing pairing correctly.

From my experience, it's just better. But hey, I'm biased. I'm one of those people that enjoy it.

The issue I have with this statement is that working together does not require pairing. I agree with your statement, but not as support for pair programming.

> As you rotate pairs, context on the code base is shared and permeates the team faster. New onboards get up to speed at a remarkable pace--far better than the "uhhh so checkout the code. Mess around, see if you can get things running. Idk good luck" process I usually see on non-pairing teams.

None of this requires pairing to address. I do address this by sitting down with people and walking through code, to give an overview or when people have a concrete problem. A big problem I see with pairing in this context is that it promotes not learning how to learn from code. I see this often when I'm brought in to troubleshoot code with developers who look like deer in headlights when they are dealing with something out of the ordinary, because they've learned the hot spots of the code rather than actually reading through and understanding the conceptual basis of the system and the design behind it.

> If I ever run a company, I will select for engineers who aren't just comfortable with pairing, but actively enjoy it.

Having run companies, and hired many dozens of engineers, if you do so you'll end actively discriminating against many types of neuro-divergent people. Apart from the issue of whether or not you can actually show any benefits, you'll be one little conflict away from a lawsuit.

> I think companies can perfectly well operate with lone wolf engineers.

This is a false dichotomy. Nobody here has argued for "lone wolf engineers" as far as I can see.

> But you have to add a lot of process to wrap that mentality--code reviews, design sessions, context share-outs, multiple people singing off on PRs. These are things you can largely do away with if you're doing pairing correctly.

If you do away with those things just because you're pairing, you're setting yourself up for massive risks and failures.

I find this hard to believe. Which country’s laws are you thinking of? In the US, at least, companies such as Pivotal and Menlo Innovations, as well as others I’m not at liberty to name, require full-time pairing. They’ve never had an issue. Your statement is also at odds with my understanding of employment law, which is admittedly at a layman’s level, but I have studied it for the purpose of hiring in Oregon.

> setting yourself up for massive risks and failures

You’re losing credibility with me. I’ve done exactly what GP is talking about and it was better than code reviews (etc), not worse. Are you talking from experience, or from personal preference?

I'm in Europe, but I've seen such law suits and threats of lawsuits over issues like this affect companies I've done projects for first hand, including at least one US company. They are very hard to make stick, because most people are not dumb enough to make statements that are clear cut enough to provide proof that the employees failure to get hired is discrimination. But that does not stop people from suing (or threatening to sue). I've seen team paralysed for months [dealing with legal issues surrounding conflicts over discriminatory hiring practices] instead of doing their jobs. I've also personally seen people walk away from threatening lawsuits over issues like this with well over a years worth of compensation just from a threat.

This is separate from the moral issue - personally I've interviewed enough neuro-divergent candidates who were qualified (and hired a few) but who'd struggle with things like pairing and I'm personally not willing to refuse to make reasonable accommodations.

> You’re losing credibility with me. I’ve done exactly what GP is talking about and it was better than code reviews (etc), not worse. Are you talking from experience, or from personal preference?

I'm talking from experience over nearly 3 decades, including direct personal experience in cleaning up the failures of teams who took short cuts because they thought pairing could replace code reviews. They catch different things. Pairing for some teams where people are comfortable with it leads to lower counts of some types of defects assuming a lot of things go right (e.g. the pairs are matched well with people who'll actually speak up and challenge each other), but pairs tends to look themselves blind to many of the same categories of failures as individual developers because they focus on solving a task and steer their view of the code accordingly rather than looking for at breaking it.

It's the same reason developer written test suites does not obviate the need for QA, and internal security reviews does not obviate the need for external pen testers, or having developers try to think about operational issues does not remove the need for SRE's or equivalent.

"We pair program here--that means actively working with another engineer for 8 hours a day. Is this something you're comfortable with?"

"No. But knowing this, I am going to still pursue this job. I will then sue you when I'm unhappy with the requirements you've clearly outlined to me."

What a world.

A whole lot of unwillingness to make reasonable accommodations for people based on disabilities will open you up to lawsuits.

To imply reasonable accommodations for neuro-divergent people is simply a matter of "comfort" is indeed worth a "what a world" on the same level as refusing to make reasonable accommodations for those who are blind or hard of hearing or in a wheelchair.

I kind of take issue with your assumption that someone with (edit: meant Neurodivergent... NPD is something else) can't pair program.

If your assumption of an effective pair programmer is that they're always bubbly extroverts with politician-level shmoozing capability, I kind of doubt you've spent any length of time doing it.

There's a lot of people who struggle with more "normal" communication that are incredible pair programmers. I've worked with many of them. In many cases, the code and the keyboard becomes a communication medium they're effective at leveraging--more than other means. Actually doing pair programming challenged a lot of my misconceptions about what it takes to be good at it.

It's skill and like any other should be disconnected from stereotypes. I don't see why you can't hire for it like any other. Hopefully I don't run into you in the court room. ;-)

Many can. Many can't. I did not make the assumption you're arguing against here.

> If your assumption of an effective pair programmer is that they're always bubbly extroverts with politician-level shmoozing capability, I kind of doubt you've spent any length of time doing it.

That was not my assumption at all. You're jumping to unwarranted conclusions not at all supported by what I wrote.

> There's a lot of people who struggle with more "normal" communication that are incredible pair programmers.

That's fine, but it does not change the fact that many people struggle with it. Including people who manage to deal with "normal" communication just fine, but who find the intensity of a pairing unbearable. I can do it, but to me it is intensely uncomfortable to the point that as I've pointed out elsewhere I refuse to be pushed into it - for me it's not a problem, as my career has afforded me the luxury of picking and choosing positions where I get to decide what goes -, but I've met many brilliant developers over the years who just could not deal with situations like that at all.

> It's skill and like any other should be disconnected from stereotypes.

This dismissal of what to quite a few people is an inherent part of their neurological makeup as a "skill" comes across to me as incredibly offensive.

I'm not disagreeing that some people don't find it enjoyable, and some people aren't good at it. Like anything else.

I don't see why you just wouldn't work at another company instead of demanding the company change its methodologies for you. I'd say the average dev shop leans more "lone wolf" anyway. Teams and especially companies that pair are the exception, not the norm. You're an experienced guy it seems like--I'm sure you've changed jobs many times in the past to find a culture and working conditions that suited you better.

> This dismissal of what to quite a few people is an inherent part of their neurological makeup as a "skill" comes across to me as incredibly offensive.

I'm sorry my view on this offensive to you. I don't mean to offend you, but simply stating you're offended doesn't change my perspective--I still view pair programming as a skill, and I don't think it's wrong to hire for skills.

I'm not saying that some people don't find it enjoyable. I'm saying that some people can't do it without risking their health.

> I don't see why you just wouldn't work at another company instead of demanding the company change its methodologies for you.

Most people do, or end up unemployed. This is a widespread problem with the lack of protection of employment opportunities for differently abled, and a reason why I find it immoral to refuse to make reasonable accommodations based on it, the same way I'd rather walk from a job than e.g. refuse to hire someone just because they're blind or deaf. That a whole lot of companies do just fine without pair programming, to me is clear evidence that it's a reasonable accommodation.

> I'd say the average dev shop leans more "lone wolf" anyway.

Either we have very different ideas about what "lone wolf" implies, or I deeply disagree with this. But in terms of not mandating pair programming, sure. I don't see that as an indicator of people being "lone wolf" type programmers, however.

But the existence of less discriminatory environments is not a justification for accepting discrimination.

Note that I have no issue with companies choosing to prefer pair programming. It's their business, though I'd probably still not want to work there (and that's my business). What I do have an issue with are those who outright demand it of everyone and are unwilling to make adjustments.

In a perfect world, is a fully engaged in-office employee better than a remote one? I’d say probably yes. In the real world, is a disgruntled, commute tired employee better than a happy remote one? Unknown.

Same with paring. If your team is full of perfectly interchangeable humans drinking the same cool aid, then pairing sounds great. But real humans don’t work like that, and for every person who is boosted by pairing there may be another who is held back by it.

In the end, it’s likely best to allow employees to self select the mode of work which works best for them (location, pairing amount, computer choice) so that they are happy and productive. Any kind of top down mandatory policy on those choices will inevitably be worse than each person’s preferred choice.

I don’t really disagree with this categorization. And there’s a lot of companies that view it as core to their success and culture to have an in person work force.

I may disagree, and I may work elsewhere that suits me better!

That’s sort of why this digression on denying a company the ability to set their own development practices is strange to me. There’s a plethora of options for the work force. Go where you’re in alignment, don’t force bad alignment on the company!

I also find that getting stuck alone on a problem kicks me into a procrastination spiral whereas I tend to find it easier to push on when I'm stuck with someone. It also helps prevent me from getting into a spiral of second guessing every technical decision ive made in the last month.

I dont really think people take to pairing or not on the basis of its prima facie effectiveness though, but rather whether they enjoy programming as a solitary or social activity.

Really, I think teams should be set up to ensure people who like pairing to be together and vice versa, coz i feel just as miserable working alone all day every day as you do pairing.

I absolutely see value in explaining a design, and doing so with code, before you commit to the full project, but for me that step follows getting my initial design ideas down as code. I've had any number of projects where I've explained the high level design in words first, and people don't understand why it matters, and then I've put it down in code and shown the concrete benefits, and it instantly clicks. That doesn't mean that design will be set in stone and perfect, but I find it much easier to have the discussions about the design then.

But that's me. If you prefer writing the initial code as well with someone, you should by all means keep doing that.

> I dont really think people take to pairing or not on the basis of its prima facie effectiveness though, but rather whether they enjoy programming as a solitary or social activity.

I think you're right, with a caveat that it's not for me necessarily about not enjoying social aspects of it, but about the granularity of it. I'm happy to walk people through my code, but I want peace and quiet to put in place at least the outline of the design in solitude first.

> Really, I think teams should be set up to ensure people who like pairing to be together and vice versa, coz i feel just as miserable working alone all day every day as you do pairing.

That is absolutely reasonable. I have no issue with people pairing. I do have an issue with teams where becomes an expectation for everyone.

The problem is that in the tech biz people tend to follow blindly without thinking. There was a point there where just because Pivotal Labs had some success pairing full time, everyone followed blindly. It’s the same with leetcode style interviews, open offices and ping pong tables - it worked for google and all of the sudden everyone is following blindly.

But personally, I wouldn’t work somewhere which paired heavily even if the benefits could be proved. I simply won’t do it because I don’t enjoy it!

Just like the choice to work remotely, the choice to not pair seems like a basic employee freedom that we should all have. Luckily, the way our industry is moving, such freedoms seem to be increasing.

Good question. The problem there is that setting up a study of this is rife with problems. E.g. ensuring you're comparing "like for like" developers is hard enough. I have no problems believing that companies like Pivotal that are known to do it get good results from it, for example, because by announcing it they're self-selecting for developers who at least believe they do better in pairs. That may well even be a decent strategy to prevent dead-weights from applying, and so I could also very well see them doing better than a company with poor screening and performance management.

> The problem is that in the tech biz people tend to follow blindly without thinking. There was a point there where just because Pivotal Labs had some success pairing full time, everyone followed blindly. It’s the same with leetcode style interviews, open offices and ping pong tables - it worked for google and all of the sudden everyone is following blindly.

Cargo-culting in other words...

> But personally, I wouldn’t work somewhere which paired heavily even if the benefits could be proved. I simply won’t do it because I don’t enjoy it!

Same here. I'm fine with others doing it, including on teams I run, but other than sessions to teach or communicate a design I'm unwilling to be forced into it.

Pairing was highly encouraged in my previous job. We did it for 5 or so years, even when working remotely using tmux. In my last 2 years there, in an attempt to increase throughput / save time, pairing became something you only do for crucial task.

I could argue that the code quality declined as well as the distribution of knowledge while not seeing significant increase in throughput of work done. Even more, and due to knowledge sharing, code review time increased.

I recently asked a friend who's a team lead at a FAANG company if and how they do pair programming. His answer was that it is not encouraged, mostly because "performance reviews assess contribution of individuals, and pairing would disrupt this process".

Will it though, when those multiple perspectives are enforced through pair programming?

Like a lot of agile cargo-culting, pair programming often seems like software development for extroverts. Those of us who are introverts, and got into software development because it's interesting work which suits our temperaments, don't necessarily appreciate this... at all. I'm not saying I'm unwilling to work with others, or figure out problems together - I have to do this all the time, we all do - but I prefer to program alone.

That's what PRs are for. One can't use the same argument to oppose PRs, as you suggest, because of this key difference: in a PR, the person doing the review has (or ought to have) context on the broader picture (e.g. overall architecture, structure of the code in which the change is being made, etc.), but not the specific changes. It's analogous to having a proof reader: one doesn't invite a peer author to review his writings, because the peer has an implicit bias and can easily miss defects.

"Also, at least in my experience, design isn't primarily or even mostly confined to an initial design phase. Most of the 'design' of a problem occurs when you're actually coding."

This is common, unfortunately, and one of the primary reasons software is so buggy and overly complex. The code isn't the design, or shouldn't be. To draw an analogy to physical/industrial processes, the code is the machinery on the factory floor doing the work--the design is what was used as a blueprint to construct that machinery.

You generally want domain expertise shared in a team, and continuously molded to perfection over time.

Mobs and pairs can really shine here, but it all depends on the individuals.

In teams where it works well it’s an enormous value add, in my experience, and the hive mind you reach after a year or two within a team is fantastic.

As a dev manager I let the teams decide, but looking at team flow over time, it looks hard to beat a well functioning pair or mob team. IMHO & YMMV, and so on.

- knowledge sharing, especially business, domain, old code, etc. The biggest stopper in writing software in large organizations is rarely technical difficulty but context

- focus. If I'm alone I get distracted much more, music, youtube, socials, I know this is on me, but getting distracted while pairing is hard and rude. I'm also much more organized and a coworker is much better than a rubber duck.

cons:

- you are blocked from working if a coworkers schedule is not aligned

Overall I think pair programming makes in my, and most organizations produce more work than if the contributors where solo programming.

I think this is the key takeaway with one missed point. IMO it definitely does produce more work vs. solo programming but that work is sub-par. The necessary time isn't spent thinking on the tasks but instead the pairing rushing things through with very little thought to design and long term maintainability.

Later, when I’m alone and can focus the proper answer usually comes to me. I know there are others like me who produce their best work when they can focus, alone.

If pairing works for you, then that’s great, but it needs to be consensual and optional.

The problem with pairing is that it tends to be championed and enforced by more social workers (especially managers), and forced on the less social ones, who are often not in a position to refuse.

This is the key in my mind. Pair programming doesn't work for me, based on past experience. Pair design works great, and rubber ducking into a slack channel (that people expect that kind of thing to be in); those are things I find highly useful. But when it comes time to actually write code, I tend to work best alone.

I think part of the reason for this is that I tend to work through designs and possible implementations in my head, but by writing code. Then I'll discuss those designs to come up with some possible issues (pros/cons/etc). Then I'll work on implementing what seems likely to be the best choice (which is may not be once coding starts). By the time I get to coding, most of the impact of someone else being involved is just going to be catching typos. Or possibly code written in a hard to maintain way... but code reviews will catch that just as well (probably more so, because the person reviewing it _wasn't_ there when it was written).

Yeah, I've taken "thinking breaks" during pair sessions for this reason.

Indeed, and this is a problem that can affect other “Agile” practices too. Mandatory/permanent pairing is one example. TDD is another. Both can reflect a more general trend to try to break development down into tiny steps.

It’s not that there is no value in developers working together in real time, or in unit tests, or in incremental development and short feedback loops. All of these can be very useful. In my experience, they are often adopted spontaneously by developers even if there is no formal process in place that requires them.

But it’s also important to look at the big picture. You need a coherent vision for the product. You need a consistent domain model that is well understood and shared by both developers and non-developers. You need a reasonable software architecture that provides useful patterns and abstractions but also isn’t afraid to change them as requirements evolve.

Without these things, it’s easy to take a lot of small steps and create an illusion of progress, yet not move efficiently towards your true goal. Increasingly serious problems tend to get shoved under the carpet (sorry, “added to the backlog” or “labelled as tech debt”) until inevitably quality and productivity start to suffer.

You can’t fix those kinds of problems working in the small with only one or two participants.

I know it's anecdotal but this doesn't happen in my team. Our pairing culture isn't oriented at producing more but higher quality code, and it generally tends to achieve both.

Or, to turn it around, rushing tasks doesn't seem to be an issue of solo vs pair or mob programming.

I feel like pairing pushes people towards this because both parties feel the need to show they aren't "wasting time" by engines reasonable definition of it.

If you swim upstream and try to work against this, it can cause some friction.

Con: you're spending literally double on engineers for the same amount of work done

The two big ones that will make me hate pair programming with you: Leaping on errors too quickly and giving low-level instructions.

The big sin I commit: Driving too fast

When pair programming is going well, it really does speed up development time and increases the amount of people who know about a section of a codebase which is always good. But when it's bad, it's really really bad.

The majority of developers, in enterprise at least, tend to write the first piece of code that enters their head, and they only consider the immediate problem. The code Just Works, so pairing is sufficient for them.

Whenever I've driven a pair session, I tend to go back and finish it - fill in the blanks: handle edge cases, tests, security, a11y, etc.

Pairing is a good tool for creating prototypes or combining ideas, and in imbalanced situations like you say. But for long-term stable production, code reviews are generally more suitable.

And there are some partners you will simply be unable to pair with unless both of you take the time to give each other significant space/time. (ugghh..that sounds like some corny relationship therapy).

But when it's going smoothly, wow, you can code large blocks of code in a few sessions and the structure/design of code comes out looking really good. You can refine each others ideas as you code or even arrive at something better when the flaws are pointed out in the individual approaches.

I have also tried tri-programming also where a third guy joins in for miscellaneous stuff like quick exploration, how-to-do-that's or research activity while the primary pair focuses on the main backlog. This is helpful because when you are in the groove, you really don't want to get side-tracked.

I am a social, introverted recluse and even I found pair-programming objectively useful.

It all sucks doing it remotely though and frankly not worth it.

I find this perspective wild. I cannot possibly imagine pair programming as productive, or tolerable if it was being done in person.

Whereas doing it using screen sharing tools from the comfort of my home (or private office but who's had one of those recently?) - well I've actually done this, and it worked great. No body hygiene or smell issues to get with, no one snacking or drinking near you, no crowding or extra CO2 and sweat - just a nice tight feedback loop which people can dip in and out of without disruption, join and stop easily etc.

The idea of pair programming with other people physically in the room with you...I can't think of anything more unpleasant.

Pairing brings a new perspective to the problem and, for me, the social element is also valuable in that you also build relationships by pairing.

Though it's completely possible what you and I think when we say "pairing" might be different. For example, the ability to not check Twitter feed would only be an issue if you are pairing for hours at stretch. While my pairing sessions are rarely longer than an hour.

It's fine occasionally for training, as you suggest, or for explaining a design to people, but like you I feel it's an encroachment.

Thankfully I'm experienced enough that I can afford to refuse to take jobs that impose it.

1. That all developers can do/produce the same results.

2. That some people become dependent on others to write code.

#1 fuels the management misconception that hiring or moving devs will result in more work getting done.

#2 makes some individuals short change the PR review process. (I.E I was there when it was written, or I trust that pair thought through all the steps.

I think it’s great in a lot of situations, where something new is being started or for KTing, but as a daily practice it reminds me of those old school group projects where 1 person does all the work and the other gets the credit.

I especially like pairing with less senior devs that actually ask every question they think of. When I hear it, I try to pause and think what's this actually about and give as deep an answer as I can. Often this leads to discoveries that can simplify understanding, design and/or implementation. You get out of it what you put into it.

I’m currently doing pairing sessions with two junior engineers and it’s been great for everyone.

I’m also pairing for 2 hrs/wk with the other senior engineer on the team to explore an ambitious new project, and it feels like we just constantly grate on each other with slightly different designs in our heads.

I will say, though, that the conflict our pairing generates is valuable as it often illuminates decision points that would be good to escalate to the larger working group.

I'm happy to work this way when I'm doing UI/UX or end-user touching work; so much of that boils down to 'predicting the ways in which the chaos apes will behave' that having another perspective is useful.

When I'm doing database design, don't talk to me unless I ask you to: All it does is make me want to choke you and take me out of the flow.

That can happen to a programmer just as much as a pilot, and it can be even more destructive. You could argue software generally isn't life and death, but who knows? You might end up working on something like curl or sqlite which may well have played part in the implementation of emergency services in some country.

Unless you're working directly on a live server.

> I think ultimately, at the end of the day, I expect and hope that every human I work with is a competent, solid individual contributor and requires a second pair of eyes e.g. through code review or pairing to produce quality work.

But that's not what the comment I responded to said!

Esteem and self-actualization are a part of maslows hierarchy of needs, I don't think this case is as simple as "pride".