Contemplating this article over my coffee just now, I realized what bothered me about this pair programming extension. There are really two divergent schools of

Contemplating this article over my coffee just now, I realized what bothered me about this pair programming extension. There are really two divergent schools of thought in software, that only get acknowledged periodically. There are those that see software as a factory process, where developers are essentially interchangeable cogs, tasked with churning out an amount of work each day. I would submit that much of "Agile," despite being well-intentioned, falls into this camp. The alternative view is to view software development as an engineering profession, requiring specialized education and knowledge, where individuals are respected in the same way as doctors, lawyers, accountants, or other types of highly-skilled professionals. In this model, developers might come together in an exchange of ideas or information, but otherwise have personal responsibility for their own outcomes. These conflicting schools of thought would seem to be at the root of many of these discussions of methodology and practice, where for some things like pair programming and stand-up meetings are essential, and for others, untenable.