[lnanek2]

Depends on the job, I guess. Some jobs you hammer out the spec in a meeting once a week, and then sit down, shut up, and implement the heck out of it. Maybe a few tweeks on a public wiki or bug reports fixed during that time.

I suppose I'm noisy as heck, and attend lots of events and meetups and conferences, but I know whole companies full of people who don't get out, dont't talk or read much, and they just stay at work and make a killing. You don't hear about them because they don't get out.

[d--b]

My point is: no doubt that twitter et al are distracting. But that's not what makes the difference between a good and bad programmer. Really complex engineer tasks require your brain to slowly process the ideas that you have, sleep on them, discuss them with colleagues, maybe read something online about it. But I find that the argument that says 'you suck because you are too distracted' is kind of dangerous. Taken to the extreme and it becomes: 'oh I won't answer my mom because that makes me worse at my job' or 'oh I am not drinking wine tonight because I won't be at my best tomorrow'. I think on the contrary, it is important to take one's job slowly to be better at it.