I was speaking with an ex-colleague the other day about the most productive way to write code and he said he found it best "to CIMP, or Code In My Pants".

When I asked him exactly what he meant, he explained he found it best to work at home, coding at his own pace, dressed comfortably (in his pants), and communicating with his team through emails, IM, or the telephone.

Digesting his approach (which he describes to clients as the Complete Integrated Method of Programming), I realised my coding is also more productive when working in an isolated environment, which made me wonder if the software industry has got it all wrong and should development be really done by dispersed teams of individuals, or are there advantages to geographical herding that make up for the added interruptions it brings?

So has business got it wrong? Should development occur predominantly across geographically isolated individuals to increase productivity, or are there real reasons why herding developers together makes sense?