That sounds more like being on a bad opium trip to me than programing (not that I've ever been on an opium trip...). I mean, sure I agree, in certain aspects o

That sounds more like being on a bad opium trip to me than programing (not that I've ever been on an opium trip...). I mean, sure I agree, in certain aspects of the job there is a level of concentration and 'state' that you have to maintain in your skull in order to be able to program properly. But a certain amount of the required 'state' can be alleviated by having a pad of paper next to your desk and writing everything down. The rest of it can be dealt with by writing code that has a simple and sensible structure. And honestly, the majority of my coding is mind-work. I don't have to sit at a computer for 5 hours to be thinking about that piece of code I'm going to write. One I have read the right documentation and I have figured out what the problem is, I normally need a bit of time for it to gel, then I type it into the machine. I think the point of the post was that new mothers need time to bond with their infant. 'Doing marketing' for 2-3 years instead implies to me that they are working the 9-5 grind (which a programmer can theoretically avoid). Which misses the point entirely... There's no reason you can't sit at the computer with the baby right next to you.