In particular, PRs and design sessions were/are a context switch which add friction. Even when pairing, however, we'd occasionally have team-wide design sessions, depending on the problem.

The pair is a collaboration. They develop together.

> Do you really need someone over your shoulder to make sure you can turn requirements into code?

I listed numerous advantages (and some disadvantages), none of which implied pairing was necessary. I'm merely answering OP's question on which environment has enabled my best work.

I'm not advocating pairing (I'm no longer in a pairing team), not even saying it's the environment that will enable the best work for other people. Our hiring process included a pair programming task to try to gauge how well that person would work in a pairing team, though it's also something you get better with in time.

I have no problem with collaboration - ie I’m working side by side war room style with one person doing the front end, the other doing the back end, the QA person testing, etc.

Do you really need to pair to write yet another software as a service CRUD app?

Note the reference to frequently committing to HEAD. That's not an accident, it encourages everyone to rebase frequently, keep changes small and to surface problems almost immediately. Whereas PRs quickly go stale and it turns into a game to try and get your PR in first.

Little's Law is instructive. There are two ways to increase throughput in a system. One is to reduce latency. The other is to increase in-process inventory. They have very different dynamics.

Or putting it in production terms, the number of people coming up with ideas for the iPhone in Cupertino is dwarfed by the number of people building them in China.

Is your argument that I don't know how pairing works? Because my estimate is that I have around 8,000 hours practicing it at this point, which I suspect may be 8,000 hours or so more than your own professional pairing experience. It's possible that I've been sleep-walking through the whole thing, but unlikely. One of the dozens of intelligent, helpful people I've worked with would've pointed it out.

You think you are, but you've never tested this thought and scoff at the idea that you could be wrong, despite being told from experienced people who have tested it that you are wrong?

Is your argument seriously "I've never done it, but it doesn't work" to someone saying "I've done lots of it and it works well"?

"That sounds stupid, but they claim it's good, so I'll try it and see if I can learn anything".

"look at my credentials, don't question me, this other person can't know anything I don't, how dare anyone suggest I can learn anything from anyone else, don't you know who I am? Also they're a n00b."

I think what you're reading is me saying "it's impossible to write good code without a pair", which (a) isn't true and (b) isn't what I said.

What I'm reading is that you say pairing is strictly less effective than soloing, which (a) isn't true and (b) isn't true.

If we were talking about professionally programming in assembly language, I would take your views seriously because of your relevant experience in that matter. In doing so I might not agree and I would very likely be wrong, but I would acknowledge your expertise on that topic.

What I ask is the same courtesy when it comes to pairing.

Like I said above, most problems that developers are working on everyday isn’t some complex algorithm it’s translating business requirements to code.

Collaboration is often definitely better than developing solo but it isn’t “pair programming”. But developing solo can be faster. The more developers you add to a feature, the more communication and coordination overhead you have (The Mythical Man Month a book written in the 60s). Honestly, we’ve found that three people working on three separate features solo can get more done than three people working on the same feature over the same amount of time. Again we make it a point to switch up so we can see the whole picture.

When the product owner comes in and realizes we didn’t consider something, it’s almost always faster to have that one person who knows how the change will affect the whole stack - UI/Back end/database/deployment, infrastructure requirements than to have five people trying to coordinate the change.

Collobaration can mean “war rooming” or “swarming”.

War rooming for example is getting your back end and front end developer together in a room along with your QA person, your Devops, and your product owner working on their piece of the feature, rapidly iterating.

I work on a team where each developer can easily go back and forth between the three languages we use (JS/C#/Python), front end development in React, database design, Devops with CloudFormation, CodeBuild, Code Deploy and Code Pipeline sometime we will split up the parts. Other times one person will do a quick design session, do the whole stack, do a post review along with design docs in MarkDown.

If you have well rounded developers, they will often switch roles on the next feature just to have knowledge and a different perspective.