I think it's ridiculous that people try to put programmers in this environment. Coding is one activity that requires a tremendous amount of focus and concentrat

I think it's ridiculous that people try to put programmers in this environment. Coding is one activity that requires a tremendous amount of focus and concentration, you shouldn't even think about this for programmers. And I, for one, find headphones to be irritating and distracting, so that doesn't work out very well either. For programming there are times where collaboration and group innovation is great--it's before you start coding. Yes, by all means hang out in bullpens and shoot darts at each other, cool. But once you start building, you take your piece of the structure and go build it in solitude. If you need to confer with someone else you figure out how to make it happen, whether it's walking up and interrupting them or even if you have to schedule a meeting. It's the nature of the beast, there is no magic pill to make that part go faster.