One vision of pair programming is to explore on your own and save the technique of pair programming for the code that you are going to keep. Keep meaning put into production, with the implication that 6 months later some-one is going to be trying to debug it or extend it.
In this vision the two person aspect is inescapable. The issue is when does the second person say "Whoa! Dude, that is such an obscure way of writing that, no-one will ever understand that piece of code." Do they say it when you have just typed it in and can be persuaded to play about a bit, searching for consensus on what makes for clear code. Or do they say it when it is too late?
In this vision the two person aspect is inescapable. The issue is when does the second person say "Whoa! Dude, that is such an obscure way of writing that, no-one will ever understand that piece of code." Do they say it when you have just typed it in and can be persuaded to play about a bit, searching for consensus on what makes for clear code. Or do they say it when it is too late?