This matches my experience as well. Like most things advocated by XP people, pair programming is simply soul crushing and meant to replace skill and experience

This matches my experience as well. Like most things advocated by XP people, pair programming is simply soul crushing and meant to replace skill and experience ("I know it's not the simplest thing that could possibly work but my experience tells me we'll be needing this later") with mindless repetition. Very much like religion. Thanks, but no thanks.