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.

> None - I can't code while music is on. Ditto conversation, and ditto doing math.

I'm the same way. I have to turn it off or it distracts me and breaks my focus.

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.

This has been here countless times https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site:news.ycombinator.com+music+wh... and it rarely was more than name-dropping.

Right now, The Social Network soundtrack. Before I bought that, M83 or 65daysofstatic. Postrock, mostly, with no goddamn lyrics.

Do you mean the 5 free ones?

Nope. I actually bought the soundtrack. Only $5 for a lossless download. €3.59, you can't exactly go wrong. http://www.nullco.com/TSN/

There is too much going on in 65daysofstatic songs. I end up focusing on the elements of the music and not on the task at hand.

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.

http://www.frenchkissfm.com/?page_id=3783

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.

I thoroughly recommend "Drumming" by Steve Reich.

Brown noise with oscillating volume, mostly. http://www.simplynoise.com/

My last big code session was with ACDC playing. That was a "I've got 2 hours to implement these features" session.

Thunderstruck on repeat. Always. From now and until the end of time.

http://ghostly.com/discovery

http://aux.zendesk.com/wall/

I recently listened a lot of "Grateful Dead" , it really kept me going.

Anything from the Beatles to melodic death metal keeps me ticking :)

psychedelic and/or progressive trance. nothing like 135-140 bpm and a lot of trippy filter twirling to keep my brain happy while I work.

They Might Be Giants

Atari Teenage Riot.

Juno Reactor.

Vocal trance

Jazz.

I like this idea. Any suggestions particularly?

Zeplin!

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