I've been writing code for over a decade, and I've seen pair programming go from an occasional practice to a near-religion in some teams. But after trying it extensively, I still wonder if we're overhyping it. Pair programming can definitely catch bugs early and spread knowledge, especially for onboarding junior devs on complex systems. Yet when I measure our team's velocity over six months, the pairs weren't any faster than individuals—they were slightly slower. Sure, quality improved, but at the cost of two developers' full attention on one task, which sometimes felt like a luxury we couldn't afford with real deadlines. Is the constant collaboration truly worth the doubled time, or are we ignoring that deep, uninterrupted work is also critical for solving hard problems?