That's quite an assumption. You've never heard of pair programming? You've never asked for help on a bug in your code? You've never talked through alternate approaches to a piece of code with a coworker? You've never hashed out an interface or a method signature or some pseudocode while talking through the problem? You've never walked through a calculation with an SME? All of these are "code and talk at the same time" exercises.
If I'm being brutally honest, I have a deep-seated suspicion that everyone who says they can't talk and code at the same time also just cannot code at all. I don't know you, of course, and I'd love to be proven wrong. My sample size is small, but the few people I've met who cannot talk-and-code also simply could not code.
The only scenario I think pair programming is socially acceptable to force on developers is a senior type onboarding a new developer out of necessity - might screen share and direct them around some places to show the ropes.
Of course if you love to hang out with someone else while you write code for some reason - more power to you, have fun. For me it's a private thing, even after 20+ years. If anything the LLM is a much more useful sidekick to figure things out.
> Can't talk and code means can't code at all
I disagree with that, I can't even have lyrics in my music really if I'm working on something super hard especially outside my normal wheelhouse. It would at least be disruptive.
The last time "hanging out and coding" was a thing was learning it for the first time - I used to hang out with friends as a kid and we would all try to figure out what Visual Basic was lol and I remember hanging with a friend learning JavaScript during the early web days, drinking coffee through the night, good times.
These days it would feel forced and can't imagine why anyone would regularly pair program, especially now with LLMs.
One for you: Write a recursive function that finds the second largest number in an array of numbers.
I struggle in coding interviews precisely because of this: either I end up vocalizing my emotions and insecurities instead of coding, or I end up coding instead of talking about what I'm trying to accomplish. Often I will see many alternate pathways branching out before me, but if I try to start talking about them, I am no longer coding, and so my brain context-switches to "social and emotional."
Probably something I could get better at with practice, but I honestly end up commenting on places like HN simply because it "allows" me to think. If I could have a coding interview in the form of realtime text chat + code, that would be ideal for me.
I guess I have seen companies do things like "contribute to this open source project and work through an MR." I do find that quite appealing as an interview process.
Some studies indicate that it's as low as 30% of people who do (so 70% don't have an inner monologue), while others show the opposite, implying around 75% of people have some amount of inner monologue while 25% do not. It's a difficult subject to test and study since we don't have direct access to people's minds and asking someone what they're thinking about literally forces their thoughts through the filter of language.
[1] https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human...
Speak for yourself
