My experience of pair programming, which spanned about 4.5-5 years of working for Pivotal Labs and in Pivotal R&D, was pretty much universally positive. But it

My experience of pair programming, which spanned about 4.5-5 years of working for Pivotal Labs and in Pivotal R&D, was pretty much universally positive. But it's a complex skillset in its own right, hard to learn from a book. And in turn it requires a degree of corporate sanity and cultural safety that is quite rare. It's also a very humbling experience. Lots of people have had bad experiences, or believe that they would have a bad experience. I just like to place on the record that my experience of pair programming has been amazing and I look forward to the day when I can return to it.