I like Donald Knuth's focus. He doesn't do email because to takes too 
much time away from the "The Art of Computer Programming". See 
http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html for a discussion.

Edsger Dijkstra, in an interview, stated he didn't use a computer ( 
http://www.geekchic.com/repliq5.htm ).  Now that is removing the 
ultimate distraction for a computer scientist!

Both Dijkstra and Knuth are into playing music as a main hobby (there 
have been some recent music-programming threads of late).

The Wikipedia article on Knuth offer's a solution to recent discussions 
of version numbering:
"Version numbers of his TeX software approach pi, that is versions 
increment in the style 3, 3.1, 3.14 and so on, version numbers of 
Metafont approach e similarly"


Sean O'Dell wrote:

>On Wednesday 09 June 2004 13:08, Phil Tomson wrote:
>  
>
>>In article <200406091038.40447.sean / celsoft.com>,
>>
>>Sean O'Dell <sean / celsoft.com> wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>I don't agree that side-interests make for a better programmer.  If you're
>>>hiring a programmer, you want someone who's main interest is programming. 
>>>My experience has been that the more a person loves programming, the
>>>better they are at it.  If we're discussing hiring a programmer, to do
>>>programming work, I want the best programmer I can get for my money, so
>>>side-interests are one of the things I DON'T want in a potential
>>>employee.
>>>      
>>>
>>Side interests (or perhaps I should call it multi-disciplinary
>>training) will certainly make for more employment opportunities going
>>forward.  Most programming jobs can and will eventually be sent offshore
>>(and yes, this definately sucks but there doesn't seem to be much that
>>can be done before it's too late).  However, people who can program well
>>AND know (biology|chemistry|geology|medicine|genetics|physics|chip
>>design,etc..) will continue to be in
>>demand.  Its not that you're diminishing your programming skills by
>>studying another discipline, its more like you're applying your
>>programming skills to that discipline (and at the same time increasing
>>your programming skills).   There are many more interesting problems out
>>there than just those found in IT (in fact many IT problems look quite
>>mundane when compared with those that need to be solved in other fields).
>>    
>>
>
>As an employee, side-interests are good.  As an employer, side-interests are a 
>potential distraction from the job-at-hand.
>
>	Sean O'Dell
>
>  
>