Talk about carrying coal to Newcastle. It is, I think, safe to say that every Irreal reader already knows why programmers need doors that can be closed. It’s well plowed ground involving familiar concepts such as “being in the flow” and “building castles in your mind”. The ideas go back at least to the 1987 Lister & DeMarco book Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams.
Shenisha has a very nice summary of the problem on her substack. There are, she says, two types of work: interruptable work and noninterruptable work. Interruptable work can be safely interrupted with no effect on productivity. Uninterruptable work is the type that can’t easily be restarted when interrupted.
The sad reality is that most people perform interruptable work and don’t understand noninterruptable work and its importance. They think nothing of dropping by a programmer’s desk to ask a random question because it would never occur to them that it would be a problem. It certainly wouldn’t be for them.
As I said, this is familiar territory. Or at least I thought it was. But reading some of the comments—presumably from programmers—I’m not so sure. What to make of this comment for instance? It shows such a lack of understanding of what productive programmers do and how they work that one can only hope that Kenny_log_n_s is not a programmer. I read the replies to his comment fully expecting a roasting but incredibly they were generally supportive.
It seems, sadly, that this is a never ending battle. Nonprogrammers are never going to understand the idea of flow and those of us that depend on it will continue to struggle to convince them of an idea that is deeply counterintuitive to them.