> At the same time, real work is not getting done. Meaningful work is usually done quietly and in solitude.
You can do great work by pairing or mobbing too. Being isolated is good, but it's harder to learn new things working by yourself.
You can do great work by pairing or mobbing too. Being isolated is good, but it's harder to learn new things working by yourself.
Depends on the things. Another person might be able to share a few tricks with you: you may not know that you can drag the lower corner of an excel spreadsheet cell to copy formulas, for example, or that you can use "cw" to change a word in vi. On the other hand, learning something like relational database modeling or functional programming requires dedicated focus that another person is probably going to get in the way of.
I strongly disagree. I rarely learn anything of consequence when working with others. Pairing and mobbing strike me as fads.
Pairing and mobbing are not fads, they've been around for a while and in my experience they've been very useful, I'd recommend you try it with someone with experience with it.
Code reviews I feel provide a good avenue for learning how others have done things.
I've hit blocks in the past while working by myself however I feel part of learning is hitting a block over and over. Only once you truly grasp why other solutions don't work does a new novel solution really fit in completely. Moreover unless you truly try to solve it yourself you don't develop the skills to solve problems.