Not OP, but for me, it's like having someone stand over my head with a pot, banging it with a spoon incessantly. It utterly destroys my ability to concentrate.

Had a chance to closely observe a session once. Looked through the code later--total garbage.

Apparently it works for some, but you couldn't pay me to do it.

(Also, seems unfair to programmers that can't hear well or need other accommodations.)

Try using an old version of Visual Basic. Note how when you type something with a syntax error and then cursor off the line, the IDE will flag up the error with a modal dialog box you have to dismiss before you can continue.

That's pair programming, except the modal dialog box is a smelly human looking over your shoulder.

No pair would ever let me go off into the experimental wilds that are ill advised but is also where greatness can be found.

Some of my best and most important projects have started out as terrible diversions that after a while even I begin to wonder if I shouldn't be doing it.

It's pretty much the opposite of what attracted a lot of current programmers to the field in the first place. Even if it were objectively better (which I doubt), I don't think it would be popular.

For many of us, perhaps most of us, being forced into Pair Programming completely destroys the enjoyment and fun of programming. For people like me it's the difference between loving my job, or hating every second of it and not wanting to get up for work in the morning.

Frequent peer review and collaboration on important architectural decisions is sufficient. Sitting down and actually writing code together is unnecessary torture.

Imagine some legendary coder like Linus Torvalds or John Carmack writing the Linux Kernel or the Quake engine side by side with another dude at their keyboard all day every day. It's a fucking absurd and infantile concept.

I haven't tried it, but I know myself, and how I work.

- Interacting with people is exhausting for me. I can't imagine having to be in constant communication with someone sitting right next to me, 7-8 hours a day, every workday.

- Writing software requires deep concentration, and the constant interaction seems like it would destroy the required concentration.

- Having to put everything I'm thinking into words, waiting for a reply, constantly being atuned to social niceties -- how can that be compatible with doing productive work? (Not in general, but for me.) I may stare at the screen for a while, trying to figure something out. A number of ideas go through my head. I run through a bunch of approaches quickly: that's stupid, that can't work, that might work, that's idiotic, ... I go back and reconsider the better ideas in more detail, ... First of all, I am reacting to incompletely formulated thoughts. Forcing those thoughts to be more formulated, to the point that I can describe them, definitely changes the way I would work. Maybe for the better, but definitely different. Second of all, saying "that's idiotic" to a coworker probably isn't a good idea.

In general, pair programming seems like it would take an extremely absorbing and enjoyable actvity, and turn it into torture. For me.

I read a New Yorker (I think) article about how Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat work together. They seem to do pair programming extremely successfully. Good for them. I have no doubt that it works well for some people. I am quite sure I'm not one of them.

I'd venture 99% of pair coding is done by people who don't know why they're even doing it and set themselves up for failure at the outset ultimately crying sour grapes