“The best development teams are highly collaborative. They religiously pair program 100% of the time, they work on site in open floor plans, they are constantly communicating. These super teams will run circles around stereotypical anti-social types who lock themselves away to do their work alone.”

Says who? No citation for the quote, and the quote itself is an evidence-free assertion (a.k.a. B.S.). I actually agree with the conclusion of the posting that "pairing" is only appropriate for certain personality types or skill level.

The quote was a compilation of what I had heard from various people who positioned themselves as experts. Thanks for the feedback BTW.

There are people that get the Agile buzz. They take the word of whatever source imparted the wisdom as gospel and try and use it as a hammer in every situation.

The reality is, people, projects, and situations differ. Smart people and groups evaluate these additional approaches like any other tool - can it bring value? The exact answer to that is rarely the same for any two individuals or groups.

Thank you for the clarification. Yes, that makes sense -- you were hearing from the disciples of Agile. I think you observed and concluded wisely.

Mostly says small cabals of people trying to boost the image of their group. Bob says Fred is awesome, Fred says Mike is awesome, Mike says Bob is awesome. Smart people review code and judge for themselves.

I do my best work (code|writing) when there is absolutely nobody around me.

"Best" is highly subjective, as you can always write better code. But I can somehow agree that unwanted noise is an unneeded distraction while coding. Of course the subject of headphone in a workplace is always a touchy subject, but they are sometime necessary.

Best in the sense of my personal work. I am absolutely not saying my best wok is better than anybody else's.

I love collaboration while planning and talking about how / why to implement something; however, when I want to actually build that idea, I'm typically much faster when I just throw on some headphones and go for it.

Admittedly, I've never pair programmed. Sounds like two bros writing a screenplay in a coffee shop and high-fiving over every rad idea they jam on.

I see pair programming as a fantastic way to learn - from what I've experienced, though, it's not an ideal way to work through a project in its entirety.

Anyone out there feel this might be a matter of unintentional discrimination?

Not legally in the US as only the explicitly named groups in law are protected. (But I do think that there's discrimination against socially awkward people--it's almost inherent in the term. However, I think this is all driven by management doing whatever they think will work to drive results and developers happily accepting the BS.)