Pair Programming with an Agent
Dev.to / 6/3/2026
💬 OpinionIdeas & Deep AnalysisTools & Practical Usage
Key Points
- Traditional pair programming involved two humans actively engaged (driver and navigator), with strict discipline to avoid disengagement and ensure learning.
- When using an agent, the power imbalance is stronger: people may stop thinking, accept the agent’s outputs without understanding, and gradually lose the ability to solve similar problems independently.
- The article argues that agents should be framed as the “driver” that produces code, while the human takes the “navigator” role by questioning direction, validating system fit, and checking whether tests actually test the intended behavior.
- A key failure mode is acting as a driver without a navigator—prompting the agent to output what the human already knows—leaving no one responsible for oversight and increasing the risk of shipping unexplainable internals later.
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