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I think for periods of time definitely. I've found listening to music helps me concentrate or shift conciousness to get round problems. If I'm enforced in anyway it merely causes negative feelings.

'Should coders be allowed to use Spring' would be a more interesting question.

If the project you're working on falls into the teamwork category, it should be a NO

I disagree. I think it depends entirely on your environment and actual job in the project.

Distractions are the worst thing for programming.

It depends on what I'm working on -- if it's random bug-fixing, or minor tweaks, I can sit around a conference table with a bunch of other developers and pause to answer questions, etc..

But for a problem of any complexity that requires deep concentration... well, it takes me about 15-20 minutes completely undistracted to really get into the problem to untangle it. I work from home now, but in the past (or when working onsite) I would just head off to find *someplace* away from people, away from conversations and noise. Even music playing (the headphones) -- particularly if it has lyrics -- is a minor distraction that I'm better off without, though conversation is far worse (the more trivial, the more distracting, for some reason).

So yeah, teamwork is fine and very useful much of the time, but if you want me to do anything difficult, you'd better leave me alone for a while.

I'm currently reading Peopleware, by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister. That has whole sections describing a productive workplace. Their preference, and strong argument, is for a quiet enclosed work place where you have no distractions. Unfortunately, there are very few of us who have this luxury and so find headphones the next best way to drown out the noise from our open plan office. I do like the open plan office from the point of view that I hear what is going on with other members of the project team and can jump in when they have a problem. But at the same time feel most productive when everyone else has gone home - coincidence? If you have a real problem, how long does it take to get fully immersed in it? Say 15 mins? What happens then when the phone rings? You (almost) start from scratch trying to find out what you were doing! There needs to be a way of blocking distractions.

I see the argument that a team leader or senior consultant should be available to help, but does it take much to occasionally look up and see what is going on? If the other team members have a problem they should be bold enough to ask for help. We also run small parts of the scrum methodology ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(development) ) elements, meaning that there is an open discussion every day. In this kind of open environment there is no problem asking for help.
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Bad article, good conversation starter.

I have yet to be in an environment in which my (insert metric here) has suffered based on the fact that I wear my headphones nearly seven out of an eight hours in a day. This is definitely one of those questions which has more to do with the environment that a person is in than with the person.

Former company I worked had 2 development groups (2 products...).
One allowed headphones, the other didn't.
The group that used headphones had a quiet office where people could communicate by talking to each other.
The other group had a radio blaring next to every other desk, phones ringing all the time, everyone was constantly distracted.

Wearing headphones doesn't mean you're closing yourself out from having to work together with others.
Just don't turn them up so loudly that you can't hear the phone on your desk ring or hear someone who's talking to you.
And of course take them off when you're talking to people...

The author sounds like a moron, ear/headphones are critical for typical 'cattle market' office environments, my productivity can be at least halved when I forget my excellent Etymotic ER-4P earphones and MP3 player, even then some vocal noise is too loud to block out, higher volumes would cause ear pain!

Peopleware should be compulsory reading for all managers of creative workers, with comprehension tests, it pisses me off that they still don't seem to care!

Thanks for your comments on this. It's interesting to hear everyone's opinion.