Overwhelmingly, I have found that the thought process I use to solve technical problems is utterly crippled by any sort of interaction with other people. When

Overwhelmingly, I have found that the thought process I use to solve technical problems is utterly crippled by any sort of interaction with other people. When I've tried collaborative sessions of this sort, they have become prolonged debates over some mediocre solution. Often, a superior solution starts to take shape in my mind, but I'm too distracted by the conversation to develop it. If I bring my unformed idea into the conversation, I'm bombarded with questions that I can't answer yet, and I'm still too distracted to do the actual thinking I would need to answer them. Whatever solution comes out of this, I will inevitably end up improving it dramatically when I have a chance to reflect on it in solitude. My realtime creative thought process just does not scale to multiple brains. However, I can certainly collaborate in non-realtime. That is, through email, or some other asynchronous medium that gives me unlimited time for solitary thought. I don't want to seem like a megalomaniac, but this really is how it works for me, based on a decade of experience. And I don't think I'm an anomaly among programmers, at least not good ones.