I think this has to do with seniority. When I was a lot more experienced than my coworker, doing pair programming was insanely fun. Because it felt like solving a puzzle with a friend, or exploring a video game with my sister. Now I'm occasionally pair programming with my manager -- who's like a 1000x me -- pair programming is mentally blocking. It's because my peer thinks so much faster than I do that it feels like I'm watching an action movie on 10x speed except every 3 minutes someone pauses the movie and asks questions.

EDIT: To make myself clear, this is not a criticism of my boss, it's just that pair programming with someone who is a lot more experienced than you is just naturally intimidating.

No. At least in my case it has nothing to do with disparity in experience or speed of thought and everything to do with being in my own physical space.

I’ve been in both positions and know the feeling! Whenever I pair with someone now, I usually try and slow things down in the beginning and ask questions along the way to see if they follow me, even if I think what I’m doing is ‘simple’. No point in pairing if the other persons eyes are glazing over :)

This is great, and also good to encourage with people who are more junior. They might think they’ve explained the thing from their understanding but it’s trivial to omit details in that position too.

I’m by no means junior but I’m new on a team, and I’ve had to remember over and over that the giant blob of the state of everything is unfamiliar to me, familiar to my team, and when I elide details I’m not saving anyone any time because I’m not sure whether those details are relevant or even if they might reveal where I’m off track.

I get this a lot as well. Just as soon as you are about to say something, or start typing. Just as the idea is coalescing in your mind, as you are walking down the path of understanding.

From over your shoulder: "Then do this thing cos of this this and this" - yes thank you I know. Eventually I feel downcast and just stop thinking for myself, I'm just a typer at that point.

I find this very interesting, because I'm in a similar boat, pretty senior, but not the top of the ladder. But for me some of my favorite pair programming sessions are with people who are operating on another level. It really gets the brain juices going.

You’re not the only one, and contrary to sibling commenter’s experience it hasn’t had anything to do with seniority for me.

Caveat: I’m ADHD/ASD. I find it hard to focus on multiple sensory subjects at once. Pairing in an office means I’m focused on the screen; the human’s body language; the human’s verbal communication; interaction around concepts, design, mechanical stuff like what actually gets read/written/executed; a second screen because sometimes it’s more effective to computer for a second than engage all of that. Remote pairing condenses a lot of that.

Pair programming is way faster with screen share & multiplr monitors. One of you has the dominant screen with "the task" and you can both discuss it whilst doing indirect things on your own monitors, and throwing them to the share when they are relevant.

Over the shoulder pairing has a lot of "do this", "search that". Shared has a lot more of "can you work out x whilst I check y" and "this is the result of y, I'm interpreting that as z. Should we do a?".

Try VS Code &/or Visual Studio Live Share or a similar feature on another editor.

In my opinion it's a much better programming experience than having your laptop and sitting next to someone so that you can each look over at each other's screen.

Also by mid afternoon you might not want to sit physically that close to someone.

if you use an ide that supports it, then having an independent cursor, pointer and screen marker is infinitely better than sitting awkwardly aside and pointing finger. That and having your own IDE and browser to perform code search or testing in parallel.

I'd use vscode live share even in the office, which begs the question what even is the role of the office in facilitating pair programming