Oh, make no mistake: pair programming is a monstrous indignity and I would rather be homeless than do it a second time. If you think it provides any benefit then you have probably never been able to concentrate longer than a few seconds and think that coding under those absolutely unacceptable conditions is a matter of, what, openmindedness?

If you read the replies to my many articles mentioning that garbage you will see that those in agreement far outnumber those like you, not that I need corroboration to maintain my conviction but it is rewarding.

Here, gamer, read this.

https://levelup.gitconnected.com/young-developers-what-you-missed-128e4cc7cc08

I’ve sent you a friend link so you won’t be giving me a millipenny by reading it.

You won’t be working alongside me, I don’t work alongside anyone. I’ve done offsite freelancing since 2010 from my home in Vietnam and the last time I worked at Microsoft was the day of the pair programming because I quit the next morning. That manager who made me do it, three days after my father’s funeral, died seventeen months later.

Actually they would be better off with me there … I solved several problems that some of their best had wrestled with for years. Because I can concentrate, but you wouldn’t understand about that.

Now you take your pair programming and your test-driven development and your stories and refactoring and technical debt and scrum and burndowns and sprint retrospectives and you know where you can stick them.

Have a nice frequently-interrupted day.