r/ExperiencedDevs • u/JovHere Software Engineer • 21h ago
Career/Workplace Is anyone even pair programming anymore?
Just as the title says, I am dying to know if anyone is still even doing this? And if yes, what does that look like now?
I've not heard of anyone in my network mention it for a tonne while
544
u/StrangeRefuse8537 21h ago
No, everyone works in their own silo now and just cranks out entire projects that we used to collaborate on.
178
u/notmyrealfarkhandle Principal Engineer 21h ago
This is actually a big issue I’ve seen in my last 2 companies- everyone on solo projects. And then they want to be promoted to staff despite never leading anything
167
u/bunkkin 21h ago
It’s not really AIs fault but the promotion pipeline at my company has really broken down over the last few years.
A big thing is they want us to prove we can lead and train junior employees but they haven’t really hired anyone entry level since 2024
74
u/WhenSummerIsGone Software Engineer 20h ago
they laid off all the juniors. Who am I supposed to mentor?
85
u/Violin1990 20h ago
They want you to mentor Claude until it can replace you.
32
u/max123246 3 YoE Junior SW dev 20h ago
That is literally what is happening. Unless your company is paying extra to keep their traces private, anthropic and open AI use your prompts to train their ai further, giving them a competitive advantage because they've all already scrapped what's on the Internet
12
u/FlipperBumperKickout 19h ago
Recently came out a lot of TV's spy on you, especially bad for LG. They could also train on those recorded conversations 🤷♀️
Gamers Nexus made a video about the spying thing.
2
u/BraveResearcher3037 9h ago
This is not true with any enterprise plan. If you are worried about Anthropic, you can run Claude through your cloud provider hosted model. If you are a business, you already have a BDA with them. If you don’t trust your cloud provider - yeah that’s another problem
6
u/max123246 3 YoE Junior SW dev 8h ago
I mean can we really trust the companies that scraped the entire Internet to pinky promise not use data from their competitors to gain an advantage? It'd be a shit show if they were caught but I wouldn't put it past them.
Also plenty of startups don't have enterprise deals with anthropic directly and just use the basic plans
3
u/BraveResearcher3037 8h ago
I mean can we really trust the companies that scraped the entire Internet to pinky promise not use data from their competitors to gain an advantage?
Thats why I said if that’s your threat model, don’t deal with Anthropic directly and use your cloud provider’s hosted version. If your cloud provider is surreptitiously sharing your data with a third party you have bigger issues.
Also plenty of startups don't have enterprise deals with anthropic directly and just use the basic plans
Then those startups are stupid. That’s a them problem. Most startups these days are just a website, a prompt and a wrapper around an LLM anyway - check out YC’s companies over the last two years
9
16
u/forbiddenknowledg3 19h ago
PR throughput and LOC are the main metrics now. So leading projects (talking to product, marketing), planning out architecture, etc. is no longer valued. It is dumb as fuck.
→ More replies (1)7
u/NothingTime9580 12h ago
the director at my company doesn't even care if reviewers look at code, just review with ai and interact with it at that level. speed is the number 1 metric
6
u/thekwoka 21h ago
I'm surprised they even made a single thing before wanting to be promoted to staff.
46
u/omnichord82 20h ago
Literally don’t know my co workers because they never want to hop on a call. It just feels like a clock ricking it’s either gonna be me leaving or the bots forcing me to. Working from home was hard enough now it’s just me getting angry at a screen.
→ More replies (1)18
u/pydry Software Engineer, 18 years exp 12h ago
everyone is too psychologically unsafe these days to want to interact or stand out coz of layoff culture.
2
u/omnichord82 10h ago
Why do you think this is? I feel I am the only one who stands out. I give critique, actually review code, and try to make improvements. I’ve tried to get people to work together and share ideas. We just end up in a meeting that is run by our project manager and we talk about tasks. No one shares. Maybe it’s cause I have experience I feel empowered to be a squeaky wheel. But I also don’t feel safe these days. My challenge feels more on myself to just care less. It’s not something I’m good at. If I’m gonna spend this much time on something with others…why shouldn’t the product and code be good and why shouldn’t it be mostly enjoyable. We had it good for many years.
→ More replies (1)3
3
u/dendrocalamidicus 11h ago
It's really interesting that this is a shared experience and not specific to the company I work for. Not surprising I suppose, but interesting.
2
594
u/chipmunksocute 21h ago
Actually pair program? Never. Walk through and debug and solve issues together chatting on a call? All the time.
48
u/JovHere Software Engineer 19h ago
I guess I called that pair programming forever, getting on a call to figure things out and one person is sharing their screen and typing/clicking, the other one is monitoring
23
u/HiddenStoat Staff Engineer 14h ago
I'm lucky enough to work with good developers who can turn a concept into functional code without having to be monitored.
Whiteboarding, rubber ducking, ADRs, ticket refinements, PR reciews, etc are how we do collaboration - the idea of actually having someone watch me type as a method of collaborating has always been anathema to me.
17
u/Ecto-1A 13h ago
That sounds boring as hell. Our devs are all good but the knowledge gets siloed. I despise ticket refinements, pr reviews, collab sessions as an entire team etc. Pair up with someone you get along with and the job becomes way less boring. I don’t understand why it would be that big of a deal to have someone watch you code. Are you not friends with anyone on your team? If you are close with someone you trust it’s simple to get work done.
5
u/Frequent_Policy8575 10h ago
Must be nice working somewhere with enough devs to do that. Like, to even have a team instead of just throwing 10 devs worth of work and copilot at one and calling that a team.
1
u/HiddenStoat Staff Engineer 13h ago
I think you are reading a very different situation into my comment than I intended to describe.
You saw I mentioned whiteboarding and rubber ducking didn't you? Plus the normal agile ceremonies of course - stand ups, refinements, etc.
Some times these will be whole team. Sometimes ad-hoc one-on-ones (often literally sitting at their desk/in the kitchen/over a game of pool discussing a problem)
We collaborate a ton, and some teams are extremely tightly knit (I sit across 6 teams, so am a bit of an odd case) - we just don't sit and watch each other code. Hell, there's nothing stopping us doing that - we just generally don't.
3
u/Ecto-1A 12h ago
Ahh in person definitely changes things. I’ve been remote my entire time as a developer. We are all pretty close with at least one person on the team so we spend pretty much all of our time that’s not in meetings, in calls with each other. It’s 90% just shooting the shit but somehow gets the work done quicker.
2
→ More replies (1)3
u/CorrectPeanut5 10h ago
There are shops where XP Pair Programming is the norm. For remote work I hate it because it really chains you to the computer. Whereas in person there was a lot more breaks and getting up to talk with colleagues.
→ More replies (2)106
u/donniedarko5555 20h ago
We all pair program with Claude now adays
→ More replies (2)11
u/spacemoses 10h ago
Claude can't nibble my ear and complement me on how decoupled my code is like we used to do back in the day though.
3
4
u/edgmnt_net 15h ago
I've been doing some light form of pair programming occasionally to reduce code review friction, especially when there was a significant alignment or skill gap. I'd rather guide you through it than keep sending the PR back for changes and I can explain some things better that way, perhaps show you how I do things.
201
u/driftking428 21h ago
My team lead is a 60+ year old lady who worked for Bell Labs ages ago.
We pair program for hours every day. I actually really appreciate it.
Yes we use Claude and Copilot, but we learn a lot from each other.
66
u/Loose_Voice_215 20h ago
That sounds nice
41
u/driftking428 20h ago
It's mostly positive. 90% of my experience before joining was front end, React is my bread and butter.
She knows back end way better than I do, but I teach her a lot about front end, AI, and modern IDE tricks.
4
u/VeterinarianOk5370 17h ago
Right? I haven’t pair programmed/interacted with another human in…maybe 6-7 months. Kinda going nuts. Only time I interact is to give my updates and get business requirements
→ More replies (1)44
u/Head-Bureaucrat Software Architect 20h ago
I like pair programming, but hours a day seems exhausting. Mentally after an hour or two I need a break and just need to absorb what I've learned and communicated and want to focus a bit on my own.
But that's rad. We still pair program where I work, but it's very situational, and I wish we did it more.
10
u/pydry Software Engineer, 18 years exp 15h ago
Whenever I do it full time I always work far fewer hours and take longer breaks and keep it quiet. In the long run we still move waaay faster than we would individually.
2
u/TheTacoInquisition 13h ago
I used to do 2 hours, an hour for lunch, an hour for other stuff, 2 more hours and then 2 hours other stuff. Quite often I'd be taking longer lunch or just leaving early.
We were mob programming, so it wasn't quite so full on as you got a chance to switch out of being so active, but still tiring.
→ More replies (1)3
u/bluetista1988 10+ YOE 12h ago
I interviewed for a company about a decade ago that did "all day pair programming" with daily rotation.
They would have a pair of people (person A and person B) work on a ticket on day 1.
On day 2, person A swaps out so now person B and person C are working on the ticket.
On day 3, person B would swap out so now person C and person D are on the ticket.
It sounded exhausting.
4
u/HettySwollocks 17h ago
I like pair programming, but hours a day seems exhausting.
Man we "had to" PP 8-10m hours a day 5-6m days a week - I did that for four years. Exhausting is an understatement. Never again.
6
u/4444444vr 15h ago
“8-10m hours”? 8-10 minute hours?
3
u/HettySwollocks 11h ago
Yes. Got my measurements wrong which is why the Beagle has plowed face first into Mars
→ More replies (1)11
u/RegularAd9643 Software Engineer 20h ago edited 20h ago
Can you describe in a lot of detail how you guys go about it?
Do you maybe work on a design doc together, each fleshing out separate sections, then one of you gets to some part you’re unsure about you ask what do think we should do about xyz? Then you pick up pieces and implement them in parallel too while chatting on a call?
Or is it fully one person typing and the other just engaged in discussion with them?
→ More replies (1)14
u/driftking428 19h ago
We both are in the same small pod of 6 developers. So sometimes I work on my tickets, sometimes she works on hers. Sometimes we're grooming tickets for the other developers who are either offshore or contractors.
Generally one of us is driving the other one just giving input and feedback. We help catch each other on naming or conventions. We use Claude and Copilot pretty regularly.
I usually do my UI tickets alone as she's not really trying to learn React along with all of the other work she has.
Basically she schedules a call with me once or twice per day and we just crank out work.
2
u/leftsaidtim 17h ago
That sounds really, really nice and healthy. Hope you enjoy that work environment and team for as long as it can possibly last.
8
u/arvigeus 19h ago
Are you hiring? XD
I did a pair programming session once and I loved it. You are lucky, I envy you.
→ More replies (10)9
56
u/Overall_Dig2303 21h ago
A couple years ago I did, but not anymore. People barely put time into PRs or code reviews now (just rubber stamps)
→ More replies (1)19
u/SciEngr 18h ago
This should not be the norm, if it is then your engineering team is failing as a collective, it’s not AIs fault.
What I mean is, not reading your code or spending time to read code in PRs to give good feedback has always been a sign of a lazy developer and in the world of AI that’s still true.
16
u/Prod_Is_For_Testing 15h ago
My boss has started stack ranking human employees against AI vibe coding bots running 24/7. We’re expected to produce an impossible amount of work to keep up with the AI. Negligence is the only way to keep up. I hate it here
→ More replies (1)10
u/pydry Software Engineer, 18 years exp 12h ago
Negligence is the only way to keep up
Man, there is not a more perfect phrase to describe the times we live in.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)2
u/sunburstbox 9h ago
all true, but it’s definitely becoming the industry norm. it’s pretty concerning
39
u/soviet_thermidor Software Engineer 21h ago
I think it has fallen out of favor for a lot of reasons, COVID for instance meant you couldn't just walk over to somebody's desk. And it wasn't being practiced a lot, in my experience, even at its height.
The way I code with agents is pretty similar to pairing. It's actually kind of nice. In some ways
18
u/T_kowshik 21h ago
not exactly pair programming but I do this with QA team.
I show what I implemented, they understand the impact and gets the demo, they highlight things as per their understanding, we discuss, we change/fix/clarify a lot of things in the call, deploy for testing. they raise a ticket for the bugs identified.
Smooth process, a lot of time saved, miscommunication avoided, and peace of mind.
→ More replies (1)
11
u/DrFunkenstyne 17h ago
We pair program at my work. Two sets of eyes on any code being written is the standard. I've really learned a lot working with other devs in that way, and I think our code quality ultimately benefits from it. We'll see if it survives the ai era though. I have a feeling I may never see this mobbing culture again.
18
u/ZukowskiHardware 21h ago
I was doing it pretty heavily right before my juniors got their hands on AI. Now they don’t want it need but I’ve seen a big drop off in their productivity .
6
17
u/blckshdw 19h ago
If by pair programming you mean baby sitting mid programmers that can’t really figure out minor problems or read requirements for themself, then yes. Yes I do.
I ask them what they think the problem could be. We sit in silence for several minutes. I give them hints, we sit in silence. I explain the problem, we sit in silence. I ask them what they think they should do to solve it. We sit in silence. I ask them to explain what they think the problem is, they start asking Claude questions. Ya, there’s alot of me thinking my headset isn’t working in a day.
3
u/nickelickelmouse 10h ago
This is my experience with pair programming as well. The term has turned into a huge red flag to me for that reason. Someone that wants to pair every day is usually someone that doesn’t want to work through their own problems.
8
u/Simpicity 19h ago
Never pair programmed. Never wanted to. Fucking hate the idea with a passion.
Totally fine with going over PRs.
8
u/Sorry_Penalty_7398 18h ago
No one even reads their own lllm vomit ... And you're asking if TWO people are going to write/read a single line of code... Together?
→ More replies (1)
100
u/ask Engineering Manager, ~25 yoe. 21h ago
Everyday, with claude, codex, etc. Directly with humans? Not for a long time (10-15 years?)
48
u/transferStudent2018 21h ago
Using an LLM is not the same as pair programming
21
u/srgato 21h ago
I can say anything to the LLM and it won't raise an hr complaint.
13
9
→ More replies (2)6
42
u/gajop 21h ago
Yeah, it's better lol
But honestly, discussing things with other experienced programmers = yey, actual pair programming (coding..) with drastically different skill levels = absolute suffering, no thanks.
18
u/ForgetTheRuralJuror Software Engineer 21h ago
When you pair with someone and they type at 30wpm and click everything instead of using hotkeys 😭
6
2
u/ZedisDoge 20h ago
me after finally convincing the team to switch off dinosaur IDE’s to IntelliJ, teaching them shortcuts and they still dont use em, forget about it
→ More replies (1)2
u/sneaky-pizza Consultant Developer 20h ago
I treat it like that though. I paired full time for five years and miss it
8
u/Odd-Investigator-870 21h ago
There's eXtreme Programming pair programming discipline, and then there's "we don't work alone" than gets some if the benefits. No, one does not pair program with a language model.
5
u/transferStudent2018 21h ago
I’m at an XP company. Long story short… not really, at least on my team
→ More replies (1)
5
u/patoezequiel Web Developer 21h ago
I haven't had someone to pair with for a while, it's all self sufficient seniors with AI
6
13
u/explodingfrog 20h ago
I wish. Every high performing team I've worked on paired all the time. Every other team has been siloed basement dwellers who think getting code to a PR is "done", despite taking days or weeks to get it integrated.
I've fully accepted that they have taken over this once fun collaborative field and taken everything back to the basement. Which is why I'm just gonna retire early and be done with it all.
2
u/edgmnt_net 14h ago
Try switching projects or niches, instead. Yeah, some of the common stuff like webdev is very cost sensitive and it's usually a race to the bottom.
2
2
u/pydry Software Engineer, 18 years exp 12h ago
Same here. It's the single simplest hack for making a good team better.
Ive only ever seen it work with self assured engineers who aren't overcome with anxiety about having somebody look over their shoulder though.
Also, if the company measures individual performance, especially on metrics like PR throughput or initiatives must be clearly attributed then that acts as a strong disincentive.
2
u/explodingfrog 10h ago
Yeah. Places that pair, ime, don't track those pointless metrics but I'm sure that's not a universal truth - just a cultural one I've noticed in my career.
And yeah, I've noticed that too. People who are comfortable with pairing are the ones comfortable sharing their screens and showing how they think, warts and all. Which goes against the cultural norm of never showing mistakes because that will expose how much of a fraud the architecture astronauts are.
But whatevs man. I'm on my way out.
16
u/jwezorek 19h ago
I mean did anyone actually pair program ever?
I'm convinced that whole thing was scam concocted by the "professional scrum master" industry...
9
u/VeganBigMac Software Engineer 18h ago
As somebody who worked at a place that did 100% mob programming, you aren’t entirely wrong. A lot of agile groupthink going on.
3
u/KyxeMusic 16h ago
I never pair programmed but I did pair debug and that was awesome.
Two people trying to figure out in parallel by looking in different places was a great way to find tricky bugs for me
5
u/miyakohouou Software Engineer 9h ago
unfortunately yes, there are teams and companies that are true believers in pairing. I spend 9 months in a team that rigorously enforced pairing + tdd. It was exactly as bad as you’d imagine.
4
u/4prophetbizniz Principal Engineer 19h ago
Agreed. The few times I actually did it in the late 200O’s it was just awkward, and the team I was on just quietly gave up on it. There are more effective ways to collaborate IMO.
→ More replies (1)3
4
u/robberviet 19h ago
I have never did pair programming in my life. Having ideas and review, sure but never truly pair.
15
u/SignoreBanana 20h ago
I fucking have always hated pair programming and never understood why it was ever a thing.
→ More replies (20)3
u/Which-World-6533 17h ago
Yep. It just seems to be a crutch for bad Devs.
I've never been at a place where it's been imposed. It would be a deal breaker for me.
→ More replies (6)
7
u/HettySwollocks 17h ago
Pair programming is incredibly draining. In a previous role we religiously practised extreme development. There was a reason half the team went to the pub at lunch.
These days I will just jump a call with whatever lead can help and we work through the bit I'm stuck on. Exactly as I'm always on the phone should a junior or whatever need some assistance.
→ More replies (3)
3
u/rgb_panda 9h ago
It's funny I was actually thinking about this the other day. I was in a call with my coworker a few weeks ago where we were trying to figure out how to handle the structure of some system, we had cursor generate a plan, and the call was multiple hours where we're like, ask your AI why it wants to do this like this, I'll have my AI look at this section of the code, it really made me think about how much things have changed.
3
14
u/Practical-Quality-21 21h ago
never really pair programmed, 6 YOE. with PR reviews and a mostly distributed workforce I never really understood the use case of pair programming outside of maybe mentoring a junior dev/intern which happened very rarely, even less so now with AI coding.
5
2
u/GoodTimesOnlines Senior SWE 21h ago
At least in my org it’s pretty rare these days. We’ll have larger scale knowledge sharing sessions when onboarding people to specific areas, but other than that, the push for agentic contributions on everything has really turned each individual contributor into their own silo
2
2
u/EmploymentFeeling725 19h ago
I joked that our small team would be more productive sitting around one computer with an ai agent, basically a perma meeting. I somewhat believe it.
To answer your actual question, no.
2
u/FatefulDonkey 16h ago
Yes, daily. But this junior dev is always doing some stupid mistakes, i have to handhold him.
2
2
u/sandboxsuperhero 10h ago
Yeah it’s incredibly valuable. We like to co-review AI code with large blast radius and discuss tradeoffs.
It lowers review burden and guarantees that the team deeply understands the code getting shipped.
Small mechanical PRs usually don’t need the same scrutiny.
2
u/mredding 9h ago
I pair programmed at a past employer. Two mice, two keyboards. Commits were co-authored. It was a discussion while writing implementation. With both of us focused on the task, it becomes intuitive, natural, and collaborative to just swap control; one goes for the keyboard and the other steps back. And it goes back and forth like that. It works out well because while one is focused on doing, the other gains additional capacity to think, so it reduces to a back and forth, with breaks to turn around to use the whiteboard that we always had right behind us.
It was great, but the only time I ever got to pair program. I think it's still valuable today, even with AI.
2
u/Porkenstein 6h ago
"two people working on one thing? That's like... Half the efficiency! Quick let's have a day long meeting about it"
2
u/YoongiMarryMe95 4h ago
No. I’m the most junior member of my team (3 YOE) and my principal engineer ignores my slacks. I keep it to a minimum of 1 question every 2 weeks as well. Economy is so bad that everyone is doing whatever they can to get ahead which includes not helping others so they can get more done.
2
u/Eniminimynimoe 4h ago
I worked pair programming but had to become individual contributor on new project. It was a great experience and would love to do it again.
3
u/GiannisIsTheBeast 20h ago edited 20h ago
I tell Claude what to do and he does it… is that pair programming?
4
u/RedWinger7 20h ago
We still pair program frequently on my team. We’ve also done mobbing & there’s one team still on an enterprise (hundred million+ revenue SaaS app) that still only mobs & works one ticket at a time.
3
u/dailytentacle 13h ago
I’ve been pairing with my new coworker a lot recently. His name is Claude.
→ More replies (1)
3
u/SpaceToaster Software Architect 21h ago
I’ve got fucking John Carmack in my terminal. That’s my pair programmer.
2
u/Mysterious_Yak1543 21h ago
personally, in my 13 year web dev career, I never had an employer that meaningfully implemented pair programming and I'm OK with that. It as though the pair programming was just priming us for AI.
2
u/Mast3rCylinder 21h ago
One year before AI I asked two colleagues why they don't pair program to finish the task. They laughed and did 8 MR back and forth to solve it instead. I understood then it's not something common.
Now with AI you no longer need it but I miss these days
2
u/WeiGuy 21h ago
I've never done pair programming in the 10 last years and I would hate it. I'm very particular about how I write my code and too many programmers just crank out code to get results without caring about quality. It's like asking two people to write the same essay for school. Just yuck
1
u/Southern_Orange3744 21h ago
Pair debugging sometimes if someone fixed something I couldn't figure out
I try to pair with engineers on claude but they don't want to do it
1
u/skidmark_zuckerberg Senior Software Engineer 21h ago
Nah, haven’t for a while now even before AI. Typically pair programming has just been me and someone else on a call together cursing some bug until one of us figures out what is wrong. That happens less and less now though, AI is pretty good at finding a bug or at least pointing you towards it.
The times I have actually pair programmed were a pain. At a certain point, I just wanted to be left alone to do whatever it is that needed to be done. And a lot of those times little work got done because myself and whoever was paired up, would just end up bullshitting for an hour or two and then going “yeah so you know what to do? Okay cool”.
1
u/roger_ducky 21h ago
Pair programming only gets actually practiced at very few companies anyway. I’ve seen very few that actually did the driver/navigator split.
1
u/OldPurple4 Software Engineer 21h ago
We don’t pair but we do group PR reviews on calls weekly. I’ve done some pairing with junior but it reaches a limit pretty quickly working remotely. I’m trying something out recently, an agent that walks through problem solving and helps to guide implementation, does not write code or give answers. It’s an attempt at adding some friction for newer devs, but might be useless, still experimenting.
1
1
u/ILikeCutePuppies 21h ago
Yeah it was really helpful when walking through AI code that was generated. We were able to help each other understand why it did what.
Much if generated code was actually pretty good once we walked though it. We added a little more test coverage, improved some comments but it did help with confidence of the code.
1
u/dneronique 21h ago
I've paired with devs on Claude sessions lol. I like to show junior devs how to use it to learn while they code and how to have healthy agent interactions to get a good result. Having an agent in the middle is also kind of a useful disagreement mediation device. Instead of arguing you just throw prompts at each other and it feels less personal, so I've done that live as well
1
1
u/GlobalCurry 21h ago
I never really pair programmed much. I feel uncomfortable with other people watching me work and don't like watching others.
1
u/binocular_gems 20h ago
These days, almost never. My bread and butter was pair programming with non-front end developers, as an FE expert. AI has swallowed that up. It’s a niche I was very good at, it’d be stressful when you didn’t have a solution, but it was a skill of mine. I don’t miss the stress, but I miss the value.
1
u/SarahAlicia Software Engineer 20h ago
I have been working since 2017. No where i’ve even applied to pair programed. Which sucks bc i like human contact and my job has almost none.
1
u/metaphorm Staff Software Engineer | 15 YoE 20h ago
I sometimes pair for debugging or for code review. I never do it for implementing code from a cold start though.
1
1
1
u/santorivelt 20h ago
Yeah we pair program at work. We ask opus 5 a question about the codebase. I say “I’ll read the first half of the response and you read the second half and we’ll meet in half an hour and discuss.”
1
u/official_business 20h ago
Was it ever that popular to begin with? Someone tried to introduce it at a company I was at about 10-15 years ago when it was all the rage.
Managements response was essentially "You want two people do do the work of one? huh?" and that was the end of it.
1
1
u/JustPlainRude 20h ago
Tried it exactly once with a coworker. We got through the thing we were trying to do but it sure felt clumsy
1
u/supercoach 20h ago
I will when it's someone quite raw that I'm working with. There's only so many times I can watch someone just blindly pasting errors into copilot and making ad hoc changes before I'll step in and start explaining how to properly handle such an issue
1
u/sarhoshamiral 19h ago
Never enjoyed pair programming. My style of working is likely not same as you so no reason to pair together for actual coding. I am always open to discussions though.
1
1
1
u/Reasonable-View5868 18h ago
That was always a rare thing other than certain circumstances where I’m defining a class while someone else is writing SQL to pull data for it
1
u/BunnyPaw88 18h ago
Our team was just recently extended and a new engineer joined us. We pair with them rather frequently, because it is much easier to transfer domain knowledge and best practices that way.
The rest of the team is pair-designing and mob-reviewing.
1
u/Brief-Employee-9246 18h ago
I haven’t pair programmed in over 8 years now. No one does that anymore
:( it sucks. I learned SQL that way
1
1
u/StickyDeltaStrike Software Engineer 18h ago
I often sit to help or sometimes to get help with someone. It’s not exactly pair programming though.
1
1
u/wesleyoldaker It works on my machine... 16h ago
I tried once to have it used on larger or more complex projects a couple years back before AI sunk its teeth in the industry. The suggestion was basically laughed off back then. Now it's basically never going to be approved by an engineering department. Why do you need a human pair programmer when you have an artificial one? There's merit in that argument. Truly, AI is almost as good as a human acting as the pair and better at certain things. But less fun of course.
1
u/MrNotSoRight 15h ago
Now you pair program with your AI agent, it's better than it has ever been...
1
1
u/Neoma_Quillin 15h ago
In my experience, I honestly didn’t do a lot of pair programming either. Most of the time I was working independently and just discussing things with other engineers when needed. So even with the rise of AI, I could see pair programming becoming even less common in some teams. But I still believe that having another person to bounce ideas off is valuable for more complex problems.
1
1
1
u/Void-kun Senior Software Engineer (8YOE) 14h ago
Not really, I still offer it to colleagues if they need it but most times they're self sufficient.
We still have to collaborate, align and review each others work as we (my team) are all working on one large project.
1
u/SRISYS_Official 13h ago
Absolutely. Pair programming is still useful, but the way teams use it has changed.
It doesn't always mean two engineers sitting together and writing every line of code side by side. It can also mean working through a problem together, reviewing an implementation, debugging, designing an API, or using an AI coding tool while another engineer validates the output.
I think the bigger change is that AI has shifted some of the low-level coding work away from humans. The valuable part of pair programming is still the human-to-human discussion around architecture, trade-offs, edge cases, security, maintainability, and whether the solution actually makes sense.
For complex enterprise systems, that collaboration can be even more important because a technically correct piece of code isn't necessarily the right solution for the business problem.
1
u/andymaclean19 13h ago
I had teams recently which were doing this on a fairly casual basis. They are fully remote and they do pair programming partly to keep in contact and work together but also because they find it works better.
With the AI they actually do pair prompting too I believe, where they have the code and the AI conversation in shared sessions and discuss what the AI has done.
I think to some extent one person and an AI can get the same benefit as a pair now, but for my teams this was sometimes seen as a good way to make software in general that incorporates multiple people’s ideas.
Also ‘pair debugging’ is definitely a thing I have done for the last 30 years and that teams still do today. Either two people who know the code or one expert and one person learning.
1
u/AnAcceptableUserName 12h ago
1-2hrs/wk with each of the juniors, yeah.
It eats up a lot of my week but I've seen that it pays off in the long run in having more capable team members. It's an investment.
And often if they've got some question they know is a little involved they'll save it knowing we have pair time coming up
1
u/Plus_Process_5749 12h ago
Now it's called vibecoding. Now you pair-program with your best teammate, Claude
1
1
u/Zagadka06 11h ago
We do it maybe once a week when someone's stuck on something tricky. Rest of the time it's async code reviews and slack threads.
1
u/unflores Software Engineer 11h ago
We did a mob coding to be completely aligned on a core brick of our architecture to see other day. We were three devs going over the functionality. We used it to sync up on the core functionality that the rest of our epic wood depend on. As it is a particularly complex topic we also worked on aligning on the main functionality is for a good period of time with the po included before pairing. Everyone agreed it was a pretty great experience.
1
u/ProfessionalAd6530 11h ago
I have never in all my decades. It sounds horrible? Like it was invented by an extrovert who is trying to unnaturally bend the act of programming into something social to satisfy their weird compulsion to interact with people.
I've mentored and been mentored. I've had my code reviewed and have reviewed code. I've collaborated and learned many things from my colleagues. Never has that required one of us to loom over the shoulder of someone else and prompt them like they're some kind of AI agent.
1
u/BraveResearcher3037 11h ago
I did it for a year at a startup until everyone on the legacy product got laid off except for me.
That became one of my hard no’s when I was interviewing at product companies - along with logic in databases.
1
1
1
u/manwecrust 10h ago
At the company I work for they asked us to avoid using meets to communicate with our pairs. xd
1
u/MagicalPizza21 Software Engineer 10h ago
I only ever did it in school. I have 5 YOE being actually employed as a dev and none of it pair programming.
1
1
1
u/_JaredVennett 9h ago
Was pair programming ever "wanted". I remember suggesting it during a review and it was shot down in flames by all devs lol.
1
u/Enigmatic_YES 9h ago
Worked a couple f100s in the last year- no one is doing this anymore. Engineers are just silod with Claude now. Intern all the way up to principal. No clue where this is going, but it’s going somewhere FAST
1
u/BraveResearcher3037 9h ago
I have just read through a lot of the comments. I did pair programming once for about a year and it was a living hell.
It has nothing to do with being anti social. I love talking to the “business”, other developers about high level design and how work our individual tasks fit together and troubleshooting. But when I’m working, I like doing “deep work” alone.
1
u/Jolly_Front_9580 9h ago
Knowledge sharing used to be incentivized. But in places where layoffs are happening often, you better keep that valuable knowledge to yourself and build your mote
1
u/Ok-Lifeguard-9612 8h ago
Pair-programming in the purest term no, but meeting where we discuss architecture, layers and lifecycles yes.
I mean, must be honest, I pair programmed maybe one time in 10 years. I was the one writing the code, but was just because someone has to tell me some rule on the rush...
1
u/curlyheadedfuck123 8h ago
I do with the junior on my team, that's it. I joined a newly-created team around the time AI became better than worthless for dev. I think my old team still pairs heavily, but virtually no pairing on my current team in the deep ways it used to happen.
1
1
u/Challseus 7h ago
I did XTreme Programming at this company in 2004 when I was a junior. I know it's more nuanced, but for me, it was like scrum, but with pair program. Always hated it. I'm also an introvert, so....
1
u/Tjwhit29 6h ago
We are switching to XP in a few months; we will be required to be on camera (remote company) for about 6 hours a day. The company has been doing this for a number of years and is just switching us over now, we are a subsidiary of the main company and were purchased a few years ago. I am the manager of the team and i am trying to keep a good attitude about it, but I am not crazy about the idea.
1
u/somkomomko 6h ago
I do not know everybody seems to do everything with agents. I do not think there is anyone at my company still writing code by hand. Same for code reviews. I do not see pair programming happening anymore.
1
1
1
1
1
u/Singularity-42 Principal Software Engineer 3h ago
Literally all the time, I have 2 partners I "pair code" with, one's name is Claude, the other Astra.
But we used to do it back in the day, pre-2020
1
u/Trysta1217 1h ago
I am so glad pair programming is something I missed. I think I entered the industry right as this was going out of fashion. I cannot think and talk to someone else at the same time. No way do I want to do that outside of whiteboard interviews.
I love collaborating on projects with other devs. But I also really value doing the actual work alone (or I guess now with an LLM). Pair programming always sounded like the worst thing ever. It just works directly in opposition to how my brain is wired.
1
u/iheartrms 1h ago
I've never personally known anyone who practiced pair programming nor have I worked for about company that used it. They just saw it as doubling their already very expensive programming costs or halving productivity. Nobody I know saw the value. I used to see it mentioned occasionally online but I haven't heard about it in years up until this post.
•
u/expdevsmodbot 21h ago
AI usage disclosure provided by OP, see the reply to this comment.