[Cthulhu_]

If you're a programmer, your primary task isn't churning out code; at least for me, an important part is to first understand the customer or user's wishes, and second to make sure my colleagues are up to speed and aren't blocked by, for example, missing some knowledge that I possess. Mind you, most of that is done in person, not via e-mail; the Knuth comment (which I'm probably extending to your statement) seems to be about any kind of external influence, including emails, PRs, slack messages, people, or whatever.

That's fine to isolate yourself from that if you define your own problem and solution for it and work alone, but really, how many people do that? That's a thing reserved for idk, university researchers and people with their own projects.