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Comment by jlmorton | Hacker News Reader

When I'm coding, I often listen to music, and when I listen to music, I often end up singing along.

One thing I've noticed is that I can type out code at the same time I'm singing a song aloud. If I tried to do that while writing English, I'd start typing whatever I'm singing.

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I do this too but when I'm struggling with something particularly difficult, where I don't feel I'm making any progress, I often have to turn off all sounds and contemplate in silence.

(Which is btw not really possible in the office, even with noise cancelling headphones. Thank God for remote work.)

Ditto! I can also listen to a podcast or have a video playing in the background and still write code. Definitely can’t do that when trying to write English.

Listening to music with lyrics is already hard for me when I'm writing code, but listening to a podcast is unthinkable--what kind of podcast? Don't you get distracted by the people talking?

I've tried to listen to podcasts while coding but when I'm in the zone I don't retain the content. I can't follow the podcast at all.

Yet, like the OP here, I can also sing along with music and code at the same time.

I can't imagine anyone can actually listen to a podcast and actually program at the same time. Perhaps if the podcast is uninteresting and the programming is copy-pasting.

Much like the other comment - I can't really listen to music while learning to code, but if it's something I alredy know how to do then music sometimes seems to be helping.

Actually when I write blogs I listen to music. So I dont think it matters a lot whether we are writing code or English. The songs and music just sort of goes in the background.

Interesting, it's the opposite for me. I can write or code while listening to music without lyrics (especially electronic or classical), but whenever there are words in the music, it's like 100% of the language-processing part of my brain focuses on that, and I can't really focus on anything I try to read (or even worse, write).

For me I can handle it if the lyrics are in another language, even if it’s one I speak. It’s not activating the same words so it’s easier to tune it out, maybe.

While that might be true, did you try to sing and write like the second paragraph suggests?

I just tested this for myself. I was very surprised when I started writing with my pen what I was singing instead of what I'd intended. I then tried coding and was still able to do that while singing. However, I was also able to type natural language while singing.

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