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Ask HN: Do you use music when coding/working with computers?

3 points by lockedinspace ↗ HN
If so, what type of music do you listen? If not, why don't you listen to music?

For my personal case, music stimulates my creativity, so when I do coding my playlist usually comes from https://www.youtube.com/@cryochamberlabel. For me, ambience music sets my mind away from everything and just focuses on the current task.

I've tried to work on a quiet room, no sound at all, but distractions occur more frequently, using music is a matter of vanishing distractions as much as possible.

12 comments

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JoeAltmaier
No music. Whatever ambient sound is fine.

I grew up one of 6 kids. Everything I did was in a chaotic environment. Never mattered.

justrudd
Helps drown out my tinnitus. But have to be careful because sometimes it can make it worse.
bediger4000
I can't listen to popular music and write programs at the same time. Classical or jazz, yes. I don't go out of my way to listen, though.
lockedinspace
Neither do I, ambience is a solid option when you need to fully isolate (at least from my experience).
nwellnhof
I prefer absolute silence. Music always distracts me, no matter what kind.
lockedinspace
Have you tried ambience music, it's not "music" per se, just relaxing or fitting sounds for your brain. You can choose a huge variety of ambient sounds, but in general it helps setting a mood when youre working.
marssaxman
I listened to music constantly while I worked, for decades. I loved music, deeply, so its presence made me happy, and having some intentional sound filling up the air made it easier to tune out the real world and focus on the world inside the machine.

I listened to many kinds of music over the years, though rarely pop music; getting my language-processing faculties too deeply involved drags my attention away from the work.

Goa trance and psychedelic downtempo were the best I ever found. Alas that those eras are over.

I used to find actual silence unbearable, due to the tinnitus I've had virtually all my life, but in recent years the ringing has been just kind of there, not painful; it no longer distracts me.

Heartbreak, and the collapse of a musical community in which I was a DJ, took the joy out of music a few years ago. I don't listen to anything while I work anymore, and rather to my surprise this has been working out fine.

lockedinspace
Well but you can always go back in time and listen to your old hits or whatever you enjoyed at the moment... Good thing with internet is that you can travel back in time with platforms such as youtube, etc.

Also it's a very hardcore decision to stop listening to music completely, for me it's one of the best ways of enjoying art, you shouldn't deprive yourself from that beautiful pleasure.

marssaxman
I'm not avoiding music; I just don't feel much about it anymore. The beautiful pleasure is gone, and with it, the drive to seek music out and immerse myself in it.
simonblack
No. It only distracts.

When I'm 'in the zone', I wouldn't hear it anyway.

lockedinspace
Yeah that's also true, when you are in that moment you barely hear it, but maybe with music the path to that momentum gets easier.