This has changed over time. Communication was not as important as reasoning or problem solving when programming was difficult and computing time expensive. I

This has changed over time. Communication was not as important as reasoning or problem solving when programming was difficult and computing time expensive. I can remember when programmers were expected to spend considerable time preparing to make good use of their programming session. One of my worst programming experiences was the time I was forced to work with a friendly, sociable but otherwise poor programmer on a task where we collectively had only 2 hours a week to use the hardware. Communication is more important now that machines and people are relatively plentiful and the most difficult issue programmers face is knowing exactly what problem to solve.