Comment by jimmaswell
2 years ago
Pair programming sounds so stressful and unproductive to me. You can't read someone's mind. Any interjections while someone is in the middle of coding can't be more than distracting noise most of the time. And I would constantly feel self conscious that I'm taking too long to write something, googling or asking Copilot stupid questions, etc. Reviewing after the programmer believes it's ready to review makes much more sense to me. Though Copilot can be very helpful as an artificial pair programmer.
The point of pair programming isn't really to be talking to someone while they are coding a known solution. It's to work through and discover a solution together to an unknown. In this sense, you're kind of both in the same headspace together, and can have a conversation without necessarily breaking focus. And I would venture that almost any question that comes up in pair programming would either come up later in code review, or could be hand-waved with "yeah, I plan to fix that with X" and move on.
The important part of pair programming isn't really the programming per se, it's the discussion.
It also requires some amount of conversational art. As for being self conscious about things, you would have poor coworkers who make you think that or some unfounded worry. A good pair programmer can have a discussion without making you feel like an idiot - much the same as a good code review.
I agree with you for a case where you are taking a feature from start to end. The case where you are spending half an hour unblocking someone who is stuck or brainstorming a better solution for something tends to be beneficial though.
I used to think the same until I was put in an environment where it was normal and where everyone was trained in pairing.
Copilot is as much a pair programmer as stack overflow is... So not at all