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I always found pair programming a bit.. hellish. Chatting about things. Rubberducking. Playing code review ping pong. All great. But the feeling of being shoulder surfed killed my ability to play around with the freedom that I do when I'm alone -- and that playing around sometimes led to better/more interesting outcomes than I'd have gotten otherwise.
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Yeah, I always bought the premise that it was good for the software, but it didn't work for me as a person, it drained my energy way too fast to spend hours of the day having to be "on" in conversation with another person.

In many ways, I think what's working for me with AI is that it is very similar to pair programming, but without the social-emotional investment required to interact with another person for long periods of time.

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Far too many introverts in software development for that.
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You can be extroverted and not want to spend an entire work day interacting with people without a moment of privacy or introspection.
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