I've done pair programming for a few years now. I've done mobbing, driver-navigator, ping-pong, demo-style, etc. What I've concluded is that the level to which one will like pairing is strong correlated with their personality.
For me, pairing with someone that's at my skill level is a good time _assuming that we share most of the same core ideologies_.
Pairing with someone that's at my skill level where it's a constant give and take is annoying, but still tolerable. Pairing this way saves a lot of time compared to fighting inside of a pull request (which can definitely happen).
Pairing with someone that's far from my skill level, to the point where they're basically typing for you (apparently this is called _backseat navigator_, which is honestly a great name for it), is incredibly mentally taxing. Doing that for an entire day is really, really tough.
Coordinating times is also an issue while pairing. Assuming core hours allow, I generally like starting my day between 11am-12pm and ending at 7-8pm. This basically doesn't work for people with families or early birds, but you don't know whether your pair is any of these going in. This is even worse if you're pairing with someone multiple time zones away. So pairing is almost always going to be a huge compromise against time preferences that can be avoided by relying on Slack/Teams and pull requests.
Generally speaking, though, I much prefer writing code by myself, communicating through Slack, documenting like a madman, and doing code review through pull requests.
> Coordinating times is also an issue while pairing. Assuming core hours allow, I generally like starting my day between 11am-12pm and ending at 7-8pm. [ ... ] This is even worse if you're pairing with someone multiple time zones away.
Depends on which way the difference goes, doesn't it? If it happens to be two to four hours "the right way around", it would put you on track with someone observing "regular office hours" in their time zone.
For me, pairing with someone that's at my skill level is a good time _assuming that we share most of the same core ideologies_.
Pairing with someone that's at my skill level where it's a constant give and take is annoying, but still tolerable. Pairing this way saves a lot of time compared to fighting inside of a pull request (which can definitely happen).
Pairing with someone that's far from my skill level, to the point where they're basically typing for you (apparently this is called _backseat navigator_, which is honestly a great name for it), is incredibly mentally taxing. Doing that for an entire day is really, really tough.
Coordinating times is also an issue while pairing. Assuming core hours allow, I generally like starting my day between 11am-12pm and ending at 7-8pm. This basically doesn't work for people with families or early birds, but you don't know whether your pair is any of these going in. This is even worse if you're pairing with someone multiple time zones away. So pairing is almost always going to be a huge compromise against time preferences that can be avoided by relying on Slack/Teams and pull requests.
Generally speaking, though, I much prefer writing code by myself, communicating through Slack, documenting like a madman, and doing code review through pull requests.