Or, is 'Groupthink' stifling creativity?

It generates a LOT of noise (imagine 5 pairs of people talking at once). the biggest advocates of pair programming are often consulting shops (who charge by the programmer-hour and therefore have an obvious conflict of interest).

I’ve noticed recently that while pairing with various different people that I frequently ask my pair what they’re trying to learn through the approach that they’re about to take.

I tend to use it when I don’t really understand what my pair is doing and want to find out so that I can stay engaged.

It seems to be a more effective and less confrontational way of finding out than saying “What are you doing?” or “I don’t understand what you’re doing”.

There tend to be two outcomes from asking the question:

We were about to go on a yak shaving mission and that’s not been averted.
My pair was ahead of me, knew something that I didn’t and is now able to teach me that.

The following are some recent examples I can remember asking the question:

My pair was googling how to do something which didn’t seem directly related to what we were doing.
My pair was scrolling around files fairly rapidly and I wasn’t able to follow what they were doing

Of course this question is unnecessary if the driver is providing constant commentary about what they’re doing but it’s easy to forget that you have someone alongside you when you’re solving a problem.

Asking this question seems to be a reasonably effective way of keeping the pairing collaborative.

One coder's experience of a year's worth of pair programming...

Basic gist of this is a concern with context switching and the productivity losses it incurs.

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