hey, wondering if anyone in this channel has thoughts on this poll: - https://twitter.com/RadicalZephyr/status/917650575327682560 - https://twitter.com/RadicalZephyr/status/917651191399616512

Nothing 🙂

Actually, I'd rate that as pretty valuable. Pair programming (and, more generally, tutelage from a live human) is in theory one of the most efficient ways to transfer knowledge, since you have an intelligence you can ask questions of. I think that'd be especially true if you're stuck on something, since you're not just starting from scratch (in which case a free tutorial might be pretty efficient). I might like a "try before you buy" deal so that I can verify the quality of the expert (including expertise as well as communication/teaching skills), but then again, reviews and whatnot might address the same uncertainty. Personally, maybe up to $100–$150/hour for a really good expert, in which case I'd generally expect to spend a half hour or less getting unstuck and properly oriented.

good business idea programmers customers service

the problem/question posed to an expert has to be very clean though. You have to know exactly what you don’t know 🙂 Otherwise this turns into consulting services

instead of a “mentor marketplace”

Depends on how good the expert programmer is at teaching you what it is they're doing and thinking during the pairing process. It could be pretty valuable though.

I paid for a pairing session to help wrestle with some ruby metaprogramming foo that was bedeviling me some number of years ago. Maybe $125/hour for 2 hours? Worth every penny. But as dm3 suggested, I had a very specific problem at hand and specific design scenarios I wanted to explore quickly.