Pair programming has been the default recommendation for years, but I've noticed that my best code gets written when I'm alone with a clear spec. In my last project, pairing added about 30% more time to each task without catching more bugs than a solid code review did. Maybe it works for onboarding juniors or tackling gnarly legacy code, but for routine features it feels like an expensive ritual. Does the collaboration boost actually outweigh the productivity cost, or are we just following a dogma?