In my experience, pair programming is to programming what eating less and exercising is to obesity: most people simply can't bring themselves to do it, even af

In my experience, pair programming is to programming what eating less and exercising is to obesity: most people simply can't bring themselves to do it, even after trying it and experiencing success. My advice is to just forget about it, like doctors these days who prescribe drugs for cholesterol and high blood pressure without even bothering to mention that those conditions can usually be controlled via lifestyle changes. Unless you're really lucky, you won't find anybody else willing to practice it with you. If you actually get a chance to introduce pair programming to your organization, go for it. In my unfortunately limited experience, pair programming paid for itself by virtually eliminating some classes of mistakes. Typos and other oversights are caught faster and more efficiently, of course, but more importantly, things that lone programmers tend to put off figuring out, the mental and sometimes subconscious TODOs, get hashed out immediately. That saves time rewriting bad designs. Unfortunately, as with lifestyle change, people start enthusiastically but quickly sour on it until the mere mention of it evokes anger and resentment.