An closed office/cubicle is fine for pair programming. You need room for just 2 people, not 20.

But I want to talk to the rest of the team fairly frequently.

I mean this in the nicest possible way ... Are you sure they want to talk to you ... frequently?

I've worked this way for several years, in a few different teams.

I guess it sounds weird if you've never done it, but it works really well.

Now and then, someone will ask "Hey, does anyone know X?" or something else, and issues will be resolved quickly. One counter intuitive thing that makes this possible is that since you're already engaged in a conversation with your pair, this turns out to not be disruptive.

i think that type of conversation is better suited for a Slack chat

To me, that suggests pairing would prevent me from ever starting to deeply concentrate on a problem.

Unless you are also switching pairs frequently, then this is not paired programming.

That is what chat is for. Bonus, it works whether you and I are breathing the same oxygen, or if we are on different continents.

This raises an interesting question, how do you become a deep worker if you're pair programming? I guess it's because the pair is both working on the same problem and can both get deep focus on that problem. Implies they should have their own office though.

You don't become a "deep worker".

Concentrating deeply means you're keeping too much state in your head. Write more tests instead. If it's still a problem, bring a co-worker over, or better yet, pair program. It's not the 1980s anymore, this industry is not for solitary special-snowflake hackers. You're a part of a team -- like a node in a cluster -- and the team's productivity is what matters.

At first I thought this was serious, but I'm not sure now. Surprising that a couple of responses to the grandparent say that programming doesn't require deep focus!

Trust me, it was surprising experiencing it too!

It would be nice if those pesky humans could somehow be re-programmed to behave more like the nodes/cogs that they truly are instead of being mere... free-spirited individuals. Then our ideal of the pair-programming, cluster-based corporation would become reality, comrade.

Why stop at pairs? Clustered collective consciousness is the clearly the future of programming. ;)

Hence all the meetings.

I used to think I needed deep focus and concentration to program. Then I started pair programming. I never got that deep focus, and I became very much more productive!!

Wound not have guessed that!

Now I think that if you need to focus very hard to program, you code and/or design is way to complicated.