Now, why should you do it? For me, pairing has been an especially helpful to my progress as someone new to the field, but the benefits can go far beyond one’s first few months in the field. These are a few of my favorite things:

Efficiency. Miriam-Webster defines efficient as “capable of producing desired results with little or no waste (as of time or materials).” Unless one of you is Michael Scott, with zero focus skills, having two brains to work on the same tough problem, parse it out and talk it through, will almost always lead to a faster and more abstract result than if you’d worked on it separately.

You’ll get smarter! Believe it or not, you can actually learn some things from your peers. Especially with languages like Ruby, where there are multiple ways to accomplish a single task, there’s a pretty high chance that your partner’s thought process will be different than yours. Soak it in and take that new knowledge into your next project!

Accountability. You both know this project is going in your portfolio and you both know that someone else (your partner) is looking at this code, literally all the time. This means there’s less likelihood for long distractions (though breaks are encouraged!) or lazy coding habits. Of course, this is assuming both parties are interested in succeeding, but even the laziest of programmers want to showcase a good body of work.

Better code. Similar to the point of getting smarter with a partner, the more you share your code and knowledge with one another, the more likely you’ll be able to abstract your code further and end up with better design, which is critical in Object-Oriented Programming. It also doesn’t hurt to explain your thought processes. As you talk through tougher concepts and explain them to someone else, they’ll sink in a little deeper for both parties.

Teamwork is fun! When you’re working toward the same goal in a field that you love, embrace the teamwork. Grade school group projects were partially awful because they were about a subject you cared 0% about, but you love programming, right!? The end product is the obvious goal but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the process. Take time to learn about your partner, figure out how you each work best and use it to your advantage to make pair programming an enjoyable experience.

As much as pair programming can benefit a company’s employees or you as an individual, it’s not as widely used as it could be — ya know, why pay two people to do one job? But, from what I’ve learned and experienced, the long-term benefits can far outweigh the short-term, when everyone is on board.