Bryan Braun reflects on years of pairing:

I’ve pair-programmed in a lot of different situations. I’ve been the junior developer who needed to be unblocked. I’ve been the new team member, being onboarded to a new codebase. I’ve paired with peers for knowledge-sharing and productivity. And I’ve been the senior dev.

He goes on to say that it’s easy to put a pairing session on rails to avoid embarrassment, but:

When I think back, my favorite pair-programming sessions were the one where things went wrong. These were the moments that taught me what being a programmer is all about. What do you do when you don’t know what to do? How do you break down a new problem? What tools do you reach for? When do you abandon your current approach? These are things you can’t learn from a blog post.