I like a place that's airy, plenty o' reference materials, and some music that I don't mind listening to but don't actively like. I find that I listen to music I like. It's also nice, I think, to be able to "think out loud" to another coder (even if they're not familiar with your favorite language, they can usually act as a kind of focus-enhancing reflecting mirror).

Philosophy can be made out of anything. Or less -- Jerry A. Fodor

Time of day is not as important as when inspiration chooses to strike. Some of my most productive programming has been at 3 am, having awakened from a sound sleep with the solution to my latest problem coalescing in my consciousness. A shower and a 1.5 mile walk later, I am in my office working away.

My understanding wife has grown used to this and finds it amusing.

-----
"Computeri non cogitant, ergo non sunt"

• 21" monitor
• wheeled swivel chair
• lots of water
• just above visable breath temp
• music i like low
• books,books,books,books...
• perlmonks.org in another window somewhere just in case : )

"sometimes when you make a request for the head you don't
want the big, fat body...don't you go snickering."
                                         -- Nathan Torkington UoP2K a.k.a gnat

1. silence
2. fast server and fast workstation
3. tons of literature, e.g. books, tutorials and references
4. no need to stop working cause the office would close

Blank, big whiteboard, 2-3 other bright people, a difficult problem. Enough food, water and coffee. Toilets nearby. Fast, reliable testing environment with good automated test suite for fast feedback. No meeting schedules. Wife and children on vacation.

Christian Lemburg
Brainbench MVP for Perl
http://www.brainbench.com

I do my best development work away from the computer. I started this back in school whenever I would run up against a particularly hairy point in the code. Queue up a print job and, when I get a favorable reply from the print daemon (which happened invariably quick since I believed in using the line printer that spew out beautiful beige and green lined continuous pages :), get my printout and go outside with pen/printout and have a smoke. I'd look through the code, marking things up, talking to the world/myself, and puffin' a cig. I found that the time it took to smoke a cigarette was exactly long enough to get me into a different frame of reference and to see the problem in another way.

So when I get back to my desk, with my headphones that block out the rest of the world, and music that reflects my mood (trance for creativity, industrial for debugging), the code just flows through me (don't dock me for the Force reference :) And of course, there's a while loop on this whole answer:

while {!finished}
{
    if (!problem)
    {
        goCode();
    }
    else
    {
        goSmoke();
    }
}
[download]

ALL HAIL BRAK!!!

Cheers,
KM

• Desktop over a tiny laptop is preferred because of the bigger keyboard and monitor
• Emacs over any other means of editing and running the code --- thus the OS hardly comes into play
• Early morning before anyone gets in versus the middle of the day when the traders are screaming death threats at the programmers... try and guess why I might like this :-)

That's why comfortable - if I get a cramp or something, it'll force me out of the zone (stretch before coding? *grin*) Phones or people are just as bad. No interruptions!

I like a big monitor because I like working on things side by side, maybe modifying source and running it next to each other, or calling up other related modules. At the very least I need some elbow room for notes/reference materials.

Prefered is also a chunk of time where I don't have to watch the clock. Even if I don't code for long, if I don't have to have that little interrupt to wonder how much time I have left it's one less distraction.

Other then that, I could care less. I don't really notice.

=Blue
...you might be eaten by a grue...

• Darkness.
• IRC.
• Books (alot!).
• NEdit (no flames).
• Music.
• *NIX (w/ bash2 of course).
• Food and drink.

Do not go for the Maltron - it is not worth the trouble in getting it. Get a Kinesis instead - better supported, more standard, and lots of accessories. And you can reprogram all the keys by yourself. And have hardware macros, too. And footswitches. And yes, I own one, and it's great (I own one for about 4-5 years now).

Christian Lemburg
Brainbench MVP for Perl
http://www.brainbench.com

1. Light
2. Computer with VNC client (ya ain't givin' me no Intel shit!)
3. MacPerl 5 (no need to comment on this- especially if you have never used it!)
4. a foul-smelling feline
5. my favorite tracker (.MOD music format is no. 1!)
6. multiple ssh-telnet connections to a UN*X of my choice
7. plenty o' books on topic at hand
8. a stiff chair to meld my spine to optimally-crooked position
9. anything else I forget

AgentM Systems nor Nasca Enterprises nor Bone::Easy nor Macperl is responsible for the comments made by AgentM. Remember, you can build any logical system with NOR.

A state of zeal and the vision of The Project clear in my mind. Grant me that most other things are unimportant.

I've only been on such a Project a few times, mostly hobby stuff, sometimes particular subsystems at work. Hmmm... maybe I should try to figure out what makes them The Project.

/J

It's not my favorite by any means, but it was the most productive. Sad. Very sad.