No. Lots of programmers hate it. Very common reason for new hires quitting at an XP shop I worked at. I expect that's why the author qualified the statement

No. Lots of programmers hate it. Very common reason for new hires quitting at an XP shop I worked at. I expect that's why the author qualified the statement with "if both pairers can handle it". Note that your comment also identifies a key value of pairing (if you can stomach it). When the model your are building is undocumented/implicit and can only be constructed in your mind by careful solitary thought, then you have a weak system design. But a pairing session can only succeed if you make the model explicit. So pairing has to start with constructing a shared model of the work (hard). It turns out, once you can share a model between two people verbally, turning that knowledge into documentation and/or refactoring is relatively easy. To the the individual programmer, this can seem like extra (wasteful!) effort. Unfortunately, it also means they are likely to make another inscrutable addition to the pile of Jenga that is clear them in the moment, but will be opaque to all next Monday. Mind you, if your management is running a ticket mill and doesn't value design or documentation, that is the right thing to do.