Learning Perl was originally written for the most part in a brewpub just down the street from my house. I've tried writing in a very quiet place, and I usually fail. A little bit of people motion and noise seems to be needed while I write. In fact, as I write this, I'm sitting in front of my home DVD-watching setup with some cable TV station playing in background at low volume for noise.

When I'm in a perfectly quiet environment, my mind tends to wander too much to work. The little bit of noise is needed to give me something to struggle against, I guess, and I can concentrate better.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker