Focus versus Interruption
We've heard the clarion call. We've heard how programmers need to get in the zone—http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000068.html in order to get their best work done, and that it's hard to enter the zone. We've heard that a simple phone call or chat from a friend is all it takes to exit the zone, but that getting back in can take 15 minutes. So why doesn't everyone work from home? If having other humans around is so poisonous to productivity, why does any business even bother with the capital expenditure of an office?
Because, while a good person works well on their own, two people working together can be awesome. Let me describe the day I had prior to writing this paragraph. I didn't really get much done in the morning, because a colleague asked me about memory leaks in the code he was working on and I helped him with that. This solved his problem much faster than he would've solved it on his own.
So, I only really...