I’ve not posted for a while. I know there are about 3 people who read this but I also write it for posterity.
Anyway, I’ve been reading an interesting book (interesting to me at least) lately called “The Psychology of Computer Programming” and it has been making some great observations and offering some brilliant advice.
In particular it was discussing the benefit of being close to other programmers since it’s beneficial for the sharing of ideas in solving problems. There are lots of interesting case studies that showed when programmers are able to congregate they can engage with one another and therefore do better.
However one problem is that many programmers work alone. This in itself isn’t bad. I love to code alone. You can get sucked into a cosy place where you can code for hours. but when you’re alone you don’t easily benefit from the social interaction with other developers.
These kind of interactions are often catered for - in some way - on line (see stackoverflow.com for a great example) but it never makes up for being in the same room.
So - where am I going with this? Well, my friend Liz works in a studio that she says is shared with other companies and designers. Perhaps this could work for programmers. They share an office even though they’re not working on the same thing. They have a quiet office to work on in private so that they can concentrate (very important when programming) but have a shared space for socialising with other developers.
Haven’t bothered googling to see if such exists already but it’d be cool I think.
