Pair programming with a stranger in Austin split my brain in two

I sat down at a coffee shop on South Congress last Tuesday to work on my first React project. A guy next to me saw my screen and asked if I wanted help debugging. He insisted we pair program right there, switching who types every 10 minutes. It was great for catching dumb syntax errors, but I felt like I lost my own thinking rhythm. Do beginners learn faster with this style or does it just teach you to depend on someone else?

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taylorc4021d ago

Heard a buddy of mine try this at a hackathon once with some random guy he met in line for tacos. They swapped every 15 minutes and by hour three my friend said he couldn't even tell which parts of the code were his anymore, like his brain just gave up and merged with the other dude. He picked up some cool shortcuts for sure, but he also spent the next week second-guessing every line he wrote alone. The guy kept explaining stuff way too fast too, so my friend just nodded along and pretended he got it. I think that's the trap, you get the answer but not the reps of figuring it out yourself. It only works if the other person actually slows down and checks you understand, not just cranks through the errors.