I did work for a few months in a dedicated "everything XP" shop that included religious pair programming. There were half as many computers as there were peopl

I did work for a few months in a dedicated "everything XP" shop that included religious pair programming. There were half as many computers as there were people, so we were forced, by design, to do pair programming. It broke down really fast. If one of us needed to read some documentation, the other one would just sit and chat while the first was trying to actually learn something. We'd have to take turns reading and responding to e-mail (sometimes we could work it around bathroom breaks... BTW, it gets uncomfortable when you know around what time another person uses the bathroom and how long it takes him). We had to make sure to take lunch breaks at the same times. Most of these pairs would end up getting off on discussion tangents and not get a whole lot done. I've seen some stupid management fads in my 30 years in this business, but pair programming is still by far the stupidest.