Pair Programming at a Startup: time sink or saviour?

I think once a month you should pair program randomly with someone. I think programming effectively involves combining thinking in the large and implementing in the small. Ive found that occasional pair programming teaches me new keyboard shortcuts, tools, workflows, idioms and when pair programming with a great programmer also gives me a very clear feedback that much remains to be learnt. In short Ive found that pair programming is great about teaching me about 'implementing in the small'

1 coder for the price of 2! What a steal ;-]

I'm confused by people who pair all the time, because it seems like the benefit of pairing varies heavily depending on the current programming activity.

For example, when I'm debugging, I can easily be several times more productive with someone else trying to guess what is going wrong. On the other hand, for most "glue programming", it feels like a huge waste of time to be looking over someone's shoulder while they try to figure out the best library to play sound or how some website API works.

Regular programming where all of the libraries and general plan are known seems in between those two extremes. Sometimes a second person can help detect problems and/or keep the first person on their game, but sometimes basic conflicts over code style can arise.

I've never been part of a pair programming shop, but I've tried pair programming with similarly inexperienced pairs before. How do people who pair all the time resolve problems like redundancy when looking up or learning information? Relatedly, how do they solve situations where basically one person is the only person who understands how to solve the problem (either because of skills like statistics or because of knowledge like understanding some API), and the second person is just along for the ride?

my co-founder and I don't pair program per se but we both are familiar with each other's main domain and often switch (front end/back end) when the other is stuck or frustrated. this works pretty well, I've found, and has the added bonus that we both know the product back to front.

I've done pair programming, and I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't want to make it my normal way of working.

As a math major, I was far more successful when I went to study groups, spent hours trying to prove theorems with other students, or the TA or professor, and so forth. In a way, you could say that's a kind of "pair math", at least the part where you try to work on a proof with another person.

I'd say stay very social and engaged with other people, and don't go dark, but I think tough coding problems require a lot of quiet focus in a place with minimal distractions as well. Like, I'd encourage programmers to find work from a local university library (for some reason, this works better for me even than a private, quiet office).