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I'd love to see that experiment, as I'm actually more inclined to believe in (occasional) pair programming (by the virtue of enforcing some focus) than in TDD.

> Open-plan offices are hip and in Europe maybe even a requirement due to space constraints but I'd personally choose a cubicle over higher pay.

Yeah. When I was still a high-schooler and later a university student, I used to laugh at cubicles. Oh, the corporate culture, oh, the rat race, etc. Now that I spent some time in this career, I would voluntarily go to cubicle and even take a pay cut. I now understand that cubicles were a good idea of solving the space/cost constraints.

Hell, every now and then I think about building my own cubicle out of pizza boxes, but I'm pretty sure the management wouldn't be happy about it. Over-the-ear headphones suffice for eliminating sound for now, but I still can't focus when I have people walking behind my back.

It's also interesting that the pair vs TDD divide is often based on the solution space.

Service/backend programmers often extol TDD because it is easy when working in a single language where your only IO is strings (i.e. Undergrad CS)

Front-end programmers may use TDD in certain established contexts, but pair may be more important when there are numerous integrations across unsupported toolchains. For example, when was the last time you used TDD with CSS? Oh? Too hard to verify that the CSS for a page makes it so that you can't click a button or print a page? Oh? Market bug isn't your responsibility?

Yeah, I see a lot of defensiveness when TDD is impossibly hard, so it's not "all that". But, use it if it makes sense. Know your tools and use the right tool for the job.

> I think somehow the world was agreeable enough to drink the Pair-Programming KoolAid.

Not sure what you mean. In 25 years, my latest job is the only one that pair, and even then it's only a few teams in a very large organization.

I don't think your AB test makes much sense. The two practices are orthogonal. Complementary, but orthogonal.

If I had to take one over the other, I'd to TDD, or at least strive for excellent test coverage over pairing, but they really don't have anything to do with each other.

> Not sure what you mean

Try enlisting services of a consulting company such as ThoughtWorks, Accenture etc. Talk to the people who are already using such consultancies.

Every single job interview I have had this year involved a pair programming session and lists pair-programming as a "culture-fit" requirement.

The very latest one I had to go to, I had already warned the recruiter that that is not my strong point but he still sent me in anyways !

>But they really don't have anything to do with each other

I was trying to propose that maybe enforced pair programming is actually of no real value or very little value it at all and hence pair-programming has nothing to do with anything actually.

I value formal code-reviews. I have ZERO love for being forced into pair-programming be it in a real job or during an interview.

Somehow pair-programming caught on because KoolAid happens.

Pair programming neatly sidesteps a number of problems, when done well. For a team, it helps to spread knowledge among the team, encourages people to follow the team discipline, gives a second pair of eyes on any bugs and gets people up and running faster.

done well is the tricky bit. You need people who get on ok with it, social skills need to be developed, and you need discipline around not committing code which hasn't at least been reviewed. Social skills is the hardest part IME: knowing you can ask for a break, some time to think, or to split for some research before resuming work as a pair.

What works for one person doesn't work for everybody. I feel that it does work for me - it keeps me focused on the problem at hand without getting distracted, over-engineering the solution, or yak-shaving.