Ask HN: What music do you listen to while coding?

Drum 'n' Bass – might be a UK thing.

I use background noise: http://www.noisli.com/

I like game music

POP Warrior Within - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1potMUPsJI

Assasin's Creed - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-nrEl3NqX8

In Motion from The Social Network - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yczul_609Gg

https://focusatwill.com -- they always have a beat that fits my current energy level.

That's the nice thing: http://musicforprogramming.net/

Depends on the time of day! Morning - classical or ambient to not fatigue the brain while tackling tougher problems: Baroque style classical, ambient: Mysteries of the Deep, FAX (Pete Namlook), Boards of Canada, film score (Tron, Hans Zimmer etc), Fez game score by Disasterpeace

Afternoon - techno, to get the adrenaline flowing again: - any live mixes from Adam Beyer, Berghain residents, Nicole Moudaber, Nina Kraviz, etc etc

Night - Trance - really to keep the motivation going, any older A State of Trance episodes (pre 500) will do to add some melody to the grind

That's it, every day :)

It really depends on my mood. Most of the time, heavy metal and hard rock of various sorts. I like everything from 80's era hair metal, speed metal and thrash metal, to the latest black metal and death metal, with a healthy dose of NWOBHM, power metal, doom metal, etc. mixed in, as well as plenty of "just hard rock".

If not that, sometimes I listen to classical and my tastes for that are pretty all over the place. I'm not actually all that educated (or picky) when it comes to classical, so I'll usually just put on a shoutcast station in the genre and go with that.

Outside of that, when I'm coding I sometimes like electronic music that I don't otherwise listen to a lot of. I'll put on some trance/house/ambient whatever stuff, or listen to something like Daft Punk, Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder, etc.

For some reason good music[1] with vocals that I haven't heard to death add a sort-of distraction when I'm working so I choose to listen to music that I've heard enough to have memorized the vocals or music without vocals at all. Since it gets annoying to listen to songs I've memorized, I'll pick acoustic or unique covers of that music (I've grown fond of odd piano covers - I found five tracks that are piano-only versions of My Chemical Romance songs -- a band who's music I generally don't enjoy but when done in piano, it's just ... oddly interesting).

When I'm in an intense bit of code, rapidly writing implementation, I like to pop in Progressive Rock of any kind, the longer the track the better. I'll often pick something by Dream Theater, though sometimes the metal-ish sound is a little much for me depending on my mood.

[1] As in, music I enjoy listening to which is usually 70s rock and alternative from 1995-2010. That's not to imply that this is a universal definition of "good music", only that it's what I enjoy listening to.