I wholeheartedly agree. When I was learning to program, I couldn’t listen to music at all, any kind— I found that it disrupted my thought process and interrupted my train of thought. Many years later, I find now that when I’m writing code that I know how to write, and am just dealing with the implementation, listening to EDM keeps me “in the zone” quite well.

My coworkers find it endlessly amusing to tease me for listening to bass music, or as they call it “trash compactors having sex” while writing code. I admit that it’s odd, specifically the intensity of the music I’ll listen to while writing stuff as mundane as a login panel, but it works very well in regards to keeping me focused and on task.

To this day, though, any music with any lyrics at all is a no-go. I can’t tune out the words, at all. Luckily, EDM seldom has lyrics to speak of in the first place, so I that problem is solved quite cleanly for me. It is quaint, however, when I take my headphones off at the office to greet someone walking in / say hello and I realize how bizarre the sounds coming from my headphones are in the context of my brightly lit office.

I hope that I give off a vibe closer to Christian Bale as Michael Burry from The Big Short, but I doubt it.