I find pairing with anyone that is significantly outside the range of your competency level, to be extremely frustrating.
You can have a junior dev, and hand hold, but it also requires effort on the part of the junior dev / a desire to learn and grow. Without that, the exercise is futile.
IMO - pair programming is over-hyped. I often find that I produce better, more reliable code, with the more space and more time I am given. I agree that pair-programming can rock in certain circumstances - but you need developers that have a certain level of synergy, you can't force it.
You can have a junior dev, and hand hold, but it also requires effort on the part of the junior dev / a desire to learn and grow. Without that, the exercise is futile.
IMO - pair programming is over-hyped. I often find that I produce better, more reliable code, with the more space and more time I am given. I agree that pair-programming can rock in certain circumstances - but you need developers that have a certain level of synergy, you can't force it.