It's simple - when you are working, you aren't free to take long and/or frequent calls from family/friends; or go fetch grocery even if you are working from home. When you are at home, unless it's a serious outage, you don't take unnecessary calls relating to work.
This, of course, is good advice, and fits well to any sort of individual endeavor, being programming, painting, or wrenching on your bike.
I think many people react negatively to articles like this one because they read it as prescriptive (that is, this is how you _should_ work as a programmer) rather than _descriptive_ (that is, this is what works for me as a programmer, taking into account my character).
Generally, I work best at home, free of distractions, but there are times when collaborative work at the office is also productive. YMMV.
The post is describing what works for him. While in the midst of something, mails, random greetings, IM pings are extremely irritating. When I was at my day job, I always had my headphones to cut myself from the open cube farm.
When you are working on something, apart from the required inputs and division of responsibility, it isn't a group activity. If you find it antisocial, well, that's how it is.
Programming isn't alone in that regard. Think sculpting, painting, theorem proving, creating music etc. All of these activities can, and are generally done as a team, but the individual's work is his own.
> I invariably have more fun and I am more productive and creative when working with other people.
I am curious. How else you suggest you go about programming?
> Maybe this is why so many programmers struggle with being social.
Since your premise was lone wolf nature of coding, I presume you will be making the same conclusions about sculpting and painting? I don't think you have a valid inference here.
> I feel like there is a message about work/life balance in there
It's simple - when you are working, you aren't free to take long and/or frequent calls from family/friends; or go fetch grocery even if you are working from home. When you are at home, unless it's a serious outage, you don't take unnecessary calls relating to work.