> If I were forced into pair programming There's the problem. Don't get me wrong, I prefer coding away in a dark cave illuminated only by my wall of monitors

> If I were forced into pair programming There's the problem. Don't get me wrong, I prefer coding away in a dark cave illuminated only by my wall of monitors as much as the next introvert, and prefer to "pair" with static analysis tools, unit tests, debuggers, etc. - they interrupt me less and don't disrupt my flow. On the other hand, I've been part of 3+ person "mob" programming clusters a number of times - to tackle tough bugs as a quick rubber ducking session spiraled out of control and became "no you're right, that's really weird... could it be X? Let me look at Y..." (usually fluctuating back and forth between multiple people looking at the same debug session or code, and people splitting off to separately investigate different possibly related things on their own boxes) Although perhaps this is more pair/mob debugging than pair/mob programming. > (Frequent interruption is fundamental tenet of pair programming. How anyone can reach peak productivity or enter or stay in the zone for very long under pair programming conditions is beyond me.) I think it really depends on how you're tackling a problem. On the one extreme, pair programming could be as bad as your manager forcibly interrupting your train of thought for a status update on something completely unrelated. On the other extreme, both your unconscious stream of "wait, what about..."s and your coworker's voiced stream of "wait, what about..."s on the exact same topic merge rather gracefully into one, redirecting your train of thought more than interrupting it outright. Where on the spectrum you'll end up depends partly on how well you mesh with the other programmer on a technical level, and partly on your communication skills. There's a lot of programmers out there where their approach is simply different enough that we're usually on different pages, and I'd rather handle them as asynchronous email/chat. It also helps that I've mastered the art of "one sec..." - mostly ignoring audio input until I've managed to finish or save my current thought, at least.