Comments by "Dean Schulze" (@deanschulze3129) on "You Must Be CRAZY To Do Pair Programming" video.

Pair programming has to come with mandatory hours. I really wanted to work at one company that does real estate analytics because because I love real estate. Their recruiter was rather sheepish when explaining what their development team was like. She said that they had hired Pivotal to set up their software development group and Pivotal requires all of their developers to do pair programming and work mandatory hours of 10 AM - 6 PM. She said that she hadn't been able to find anyone who wanted to work under those conditions. I told her that I wouldn't be a good fit on that team either. Maybe Pivotal was being crazy like a fox by doing this. If they impose a regime that no one wants to work under that company would have no choice but to outsource their software development to Pivotal. Think about it. If pair programming, TDD, or any of the other fads being pushed by consultants worked significantly better than other practices then they would be widely adopted because the benefits would be clear.
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@PatrikKron - That rings true. I've also found pairing to be useful when you encounter something new or some convoluted legacy code. Or when you just need another set of eyes on your code. That kind of common sense approach is missing from what consultants are selling.
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@talideon - Pivotal need to hear that. They seem to demand 100% pairing. I've been "pair programming" quite a bit lately since I'm learning a proprietary Angular framework. It has a long learning curve. One hour a day or so of screen sharing is typical. I've also found that I need to think things through on my own before I have really learned a new API. Listening to someone else talk me through it is OK for an introduction, but I have to work with it myself to really learn an API. Having to recall things from memory is an essential step in cognition.
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Studies based on students are worthless on professional teams where developers typically have 5+ years of professional experience. Students are often learning the basic idioms and patterns of a language. A lot of students don't know how to use source control systems. So their experience doesn't translate to the professional world, let alone high performing teams compromised of the top 10% of professional developers.
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