Pair programming has been common practice in the programming industry during last three decades, but only recently did it start to draw the attention as a teaching strategy. This paper investigates whether we should introduce pair programming at the beginning of the semester, instead later in the semester. To perform this investigation, we performed a control group empirical study wherein pair programming was used in the first half of the semester (in one section of introductory CS course). The control group (the other section of the same course) introduced pair programming in the second half of the semester. This study supported the implementation of specific assessment strategies to assess individual programming abilities during pair programming situations. Results found that students perceive pair programming as being beneficial and all of the subjects who used pair programming indicated that they would prefer using it again as opposed to working individually.