Chillout is my go to. Check out groups like Blue Sky Black Death (instrumental hip-hop), Portishead, and Apparat. The genre is big -- you can spend a lot of time finding stuff you like.
Don’t know if others experience this, but I can’t listen to anything with lyrics while figuring things out because it distracts me, so movie scores work best. (Currently, that’s James Horner, Thomas Newman etc.) When I’m banging work out in the production phase though where I don’t need to think, then metalcore/metal/hard rock.
I tend to listen to FrenchKissFM. It's an online radio station. Mostly electronic, and house music. Very few lyrics which is great since it doesn't distract me too much.
None - I can't code while music is on. Ditto conversation, and ditto doing math.
There was something in PeopleWare (I think) about an experiment done with people listening to music. Those listening to their preferred music performed about as well as those who preferred silence and got it, and about as well as those who preferred music, but had silence. The group that preferred silence but had music performed, unsurprisingly, comparatively badly.
The sting in the tail was this. The task they were given had an "Aha!" insight buried in it. Namely, the full set of transforms they'd been asked to implement turned out to be trivial, although the individual components weren't.
All the programmers who had the "Aha!" moment had silence, regardless of their preference. No one with music saw the short cut.
I've since tried to find concrete evidence to support this anecdote, either papers, or first hand accounts, but the recounting in PeopleWare remains the only reference I have.
Not only am I incapable of productive work with music or sound, I temporarily lose speech if I am interrupted. If the phone rings while I am coding I don't even bother to answer: I will not be able to talk anyway, and I wont remember anything you tell me.
27 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 55.1 ms ] threadhttp://www.frenchkissfm.com/?page_id=3783
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=61831
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=132026
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=167076
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=367418
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=668087
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=716219
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=769769
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1209378
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1525445
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1734122
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1833040
-----
And again, from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=716262 - one of the many times this question has come up ...
None - I can't code while music is on. Ditto conversation, and ditto doing math.
There was something in PeopleWare (I think) about an experiment done with people listening to music. Those listening to their preferred music performed about as well as those who preferred silence and got it, and about as well as those who preferred music, but had silence. The group that preferred silence but had music performed, unsurprisingly, comparatively badly.
The sting in the tail was this. The task they were given had an "Aha!" insight buried in it. Namely, the full set of transforms they'd been asked to implement turned out to be trivial, although the individual components weren't.
All the programmers who had the "Aha!" moment had silence, regardless of their preference. No one with music saw the short cut.
I've since tried to find concrete evidence to support this anecdote, either papers, or first hand accounts, but the recounting in PeopleWare remains the only reference I have.
I'm the same way. I have to turn it off or it distracts me and breaks my focus.