Why Pair Programming Is Good: Because You're Lazy

I don't have any stastical evidence of this, just my own experiences, but I would hazard a guess that the majority of bugs in software could be prevented if programmer's were not lazy.

I don't mean to suggest that progammer's are inherently more lazy than the average person, but they are asked to work continually on challenging problems all day. For the most part the intrigue of these challenges is enough to stave off laziness, but when it comes down to the nitty gritty of implementing an application, there is plenty of opportunity to slack off. Personally I don't know how many times I have skipped verifying that some feature worked well on Safari after checking on both Firefox and IE. For me at least, this is when the majority of bugs rear their head.

The laziness factor grows exponentially when I am doing test driven development. I simply can not bring myself to exercise the necessary degree of self control when it comes to writing tests to guarantee that my application has enough coverage...

This is where pair programming comes in. There is no better (in my experience) way to battle laziness than with the peer pressure that comes with pair programming. It is really hard to describe without experiencing it yourself, but it is far easier to maintain discipline when it comes to testing or verifying functionality across browsers when you have someone there next to you. The two people just feed off of each other, not letting the other slack off. It is truly effective.