Working Best at Coffee Shops
Not my experience.  Here's why...A coffee shop and a laptop are convenient, even fun ways to produce mediocre content.  A blog entry, email, maybe even cleaning up a few lines of code.  But as most programmers know, sooner or later, you have to enter another mode to get that additional "oomph" to get the important critical-path work done.  Some call it "the zone".In fact we just talked about this the other day:http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2450260A coffee shop is probably the best way to think you've entered the zone without actually entering the zone.  The can be very dangerous.  You've had a good time surrounded by like minded people (kinda like being here at hn), but you've never actually transcended anything really important.I spend time at the library one or more times per week, sometimes just to get out of the office.  It's fun to think and get transactions done, but fortunately, I have an internal guide that tells me, "Time to get back to the silence, large screen, and comfortable chair of the office to get the real work done."I realize that this isn't the same experience as others, but I still often want to ask them, "Did you really get done what you wanted to get done in the coffee shop?"This subject reminds me of a great line from Joel Spolsky's "Hitting the High Notes":http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html"Five Antonio Salieris won't produce Mozart's Requiem. Ever. Not if they work for 100 years."My version:"Five workers in the coffee shop won't produce the killer work that one in a dedicated space can produce. Ever. Not if they drink 100 lattes."