100%. This is what people fail to realize about programming. Sometimes our job is just writing stuff where we already know what we need to do. That stuff tends to go pretty fast.
The hard part of our job, and what takes the majority of my time, is creating solutions to problems. And a lot of that time doesn’t even involve typing. I have to look through documentation, other people’s code, logs. And just think. The typing starts when I have an idea to try out.
Interrupting that process is like detailing any other creative process. The problem is not the time I have to take to answer a question, it’s the time it will take to get back into the headspace the interruption took me out of.
That is why I love pencil and paper. As I'm going through code I take notes. As I read doc I take notes. As I'm thinking I take notes. If I do get interrupted it's relatively easy to pick back up because I have all these notes. By the time I'm coding I'm almost always following a mostly fleshed out algorithm so it goes pretty quick.
The hard part of our job, and what takes the majority of my time, is creating solutions to problems. And a lot of that time doesn’t even involve typing. I have to look through documentation, other people’s code, logs. And just think. The typing starts when I have an idea to try out.
Interrupting that process is like detailing any other creative process. The problem is not the time I have to take to answer a question, it’s the time it will take to get back into the headspace the interruption took me out of.