I've had some form of Internet connection since ~2000 and up until a few years ago I never thought I could go without for more than a week or so. In 2010 I had to cut off my DSL account due to financial reasons. I was offline for around nine months and in this time I found that, code-wise, I was the most productive I'd ever been.
When hacking on random stuff while I was online, I'd often find myself starting off opening a browser to load an API reference manual or something similar, and before I knew it I was faffing about on something completely irrelevant. Sometimes it'd be related to the project I was working on (sort of a Wikipedia effect; you can't stop at just one link) and other times it would be random crap.
While I was offline, since I was stuck with the basic essentials related to a particular project (appropriate development packages, documentation etc.), I found myself not only more focused on the task at hand, but generally more interested and enthusiastic about the problem I was working on.
I am currently without a home internet connection again, but this time I have a 'smartphone' that I can tether when necessary. I've noticed having that option available can be a really bad thing for my productivity. I certainly benefit from having absolutely no possibility of accessing the internet, as long as I have all the tools and resources at hand that I need to get the current job done.
When hacking on random stuff while I was online, I'd often find myself starting off opening a browser to load an API reference manual or something similar, and before I knew it I was faffing about on something completely irrelevant. Sometimes it'd be related to the project I was working on (sort of a Wikipedia effect; you can't stop at just one link) and other times it would be random crap.
While I was offline, since I was stuck with the basic essentials related to a particular project (appropriate development packages, documentation etc.), I found myself not only more focused on the task at hand, but generally more interested and enthusiastic about the problem I was working on.
I am currently without a home internet connection again, but this time I have a 'smartphone' that I can tether when necessary. I've noticed having that option available can be a really bad thing for my productivity. I certainly benefit from having absolutely no possibility of accessing the internet, as long as I have all the tools and resources at hand that I need to get the current job done.