Are interruptions really worse for programmers than for other knowledge workers?

Are interruptions really worse for programmers than for other knowledge workers?

5 years ago
ian $I9xuH7PGU4

https://dev.to/_bigblind/are-interruptions-really-worse-for-programmers-than-for-other-knowledge-workers-2ij9

This is quite a popular cartoon. I posted this in a comment on why programmers wear headphones a year ago, and it has received 63 ❤s.

But I think we like this idea because it makes us feel special, and I don't believe we're as special as we think we are. A talk I found on YouTube some time ago has convinced me that a lot of interruption aversion we feel is caused by not breaking our work into small enough chunks.

This in turn is caused by not understanding the scope of what we're doing. Very often we just dig in, thinking it'll be a small change. An hour later we're left with 10 uncommitted files with changes all over the project.