The mortifying ordeal of pairing all day

This is a feature, not a bug!

Most people are mediocre at nearly everything. The mediocre person who knows their limitations and embraces systems to get the most out of themselves is more valuable than the mediocre person who sees themselves as a rockstar.

The good, is what the author was talking about. That team cohesiveness, that he disturbingly compared to being in a Borg Collective, is something that can't be easily quantified, but can amplify energy and positive morale. The Marines have known this for a couple of hundred years. Every Marine I've ever talked to, has described, almost verbatim, what he said. About how the squads act as a unit; almost without thinking. The results are tough to argue with. They are a highly effective fighting force.

The price can be burnout (as mentioned). When everything we do is being channeled and amplified, we have to be "on" all the time. We don't get that "five minutes of spacing out" between modules. In my case, that's absolutely required.

It's also a young person's game (like being a Marine infantryman). As I've gotten older, my personal process has become almost supernatural, but it has also become incredibly draining, and that "down time" is now no longer a luxury, but a necessity. On days that I have had some really challenging work, like chasing a pernicious bug, or setting up scaffolding for a new architecture, I can be absolutely flattened by bedtime. I feel as if I have spent the day digging trenches.

Also, I work best in my own head. I can create a pretty sizable architecture in my head, and don't need to write down a thing. That makes for very fast development, and tremendous flexibility. I can tear down an entire architectural construct, if it proves ineffective, and rebuild it, in a few minutes (in my head).

The minute I need to communicate it, however, that efficiency goes right into the bog.

There were whiteboards, snacks, rating each other’s themes, and jokes.

What worked very well was to pair for conceptional problems, like architecture and defining modules and their interfaces. Commit some types and pseudo-code.

We’d then break away and work at our own speed and in our own style using the common foundation.

Come together to integrate and discuss.

Pairing is also worth it’s weight in gold for debugging. It’s like a rubber duck, but doesn’t feel wrong.

It is of course of utmost importance that both parties enjoy it. Else it’s pain and a waste of everybody’s time. I had a colleague who hated it like the plague. In which case short code/review cycles worked best.

A good tool, if employed correctly. Like most things, really. And fuck management if they force it down on me.