Programming in pairs was invented when programming was a profession of white males, with almost no exceptions. In large projects, 20% of the workforce is invested into building new stuff, 80% in hunting the errors. Having somebody watching over the shoulder helps detecting errors before they get hidden in millions of lines of code.
Edit: Today, you don't place two programmers before one terminal. Instead, we have source code repositories, code reviews and software to temporary share screens. If there is a "programming in pairs" culture today, then it may be really just a measure to keep diversity hires occupied.
Perfect analysis. I'm now in charge of a group of coders. You are spot on. Git code reviews is how we detect errors and Teams is how coders collaborate. I often help my team resolve issues via screen sharing. We do not do pair programming as such, except when one person needs help once in a while.
My biggest problem is with good coders misunderstanding what we want to achieve and they simply do the wrong thing. My team is pretty talented but if I don't watch them often enough, they do the wrong thing.
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