This was the only line I really disagreed with. Pair programming, when done right and with two engaged participants, can be extremely rewarding and speeds up time to develop/review/test/etc.
Either you're both at the same level, and you can feed off each other, thinking through edge cases and bugs as you go. Or you could be at different levels, where one engineer is teaching, and the other is learning. It's really a win-win in my opinion.
100% this. in my last job i transitioned into a role i didn't have much experience in, and i paired for a few months and learned more than i ever could have on my own.
the miserly "leave me alone and let me code by myself" people are siloing knowledge and probably not writing the best code or products than if their code could be critiqued in real time or on pull requests and so on.
a lot of adult software engineering is not in a vacuum but in a collaborative and fast-feedback based environment
Either you're both at the same level, and you can feed off each other, thinking through edge cases and bugs as you go. Or you could be at different levels, where one engineer is teaching, and the other is learning. It's really a win-win in my opinion.