Pair programming is the act of letting other drive you around the town while you're sleeping!

As someone who likes being alone, pair programming sounds like pure hell

I've never enjoyed pair programming, I don't like other people driving me around either.

You are 50% correct :) there is a driver, but instead of sleeping, the other person takes the role as the navigator.

One does the manual labor of typing (coding), the other does the thinking (problem solving).

These roles are switched every 15-30 minutes.

Pair programming is great when there's a tricky bug/issue/situation you need to solve, and you've got people at the same level as you, who you trust, and you're happy to work on it together. For that, it's fantastic.

For general work, a complete no no in my book. Takes up twice the manpower for no real gain, and often ends up with people arguing over needless crap.

@JustThat Hopefully that sort of stuff is addressed in a style guide. But yeah, things like "we should do this functionally Vs imperatively" discussions come up all the time. If you're doing pp fixing a critical issue though, no-one cares about that sort of thing so those problems don't tend to arise as often.