Remember those experiments at school, involving Woodlice (Slaters) where you create an environment with a light side and a dark side. Well, there was a great example of this today in the office, with one half of the room in darkness and the other fully lit. Of those devs in the office, 3 were in the dark, 2 in semi dark and 2 in the light. Initially, there were 3 in the light, 2 in semi light and 2 in the dark. As the day wore on and light levels fell making the dark side darker, 1 developer moved out of the light to be in the dark side.

Perhaps this example isn’t entirely convincing, but I’m sure there is something going on here with the typical developer preference for the darker working environment. I seem to remember most of the Computer Science students at Uni would hang out in the computer labs at night, in front of the big old DEC machines, with most of the lights off.

I wonder if part of this is to do with a need for sensory deprivation, a way of reducing the volume of information entering the brain. I know some developers will also use headphones to block out the background chatter, helping them focus on the work and less on the distracting debates about the best method of elastic band projection.

Actually, I’m wondering if this preference for dark (sensory deprivation) hints at an autistic tendency in most developers. Or perhaps it's just easier to sleep with the lights off?