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Comment by CheckHook | Hacker News Reader

> For example, realising that other people find listening to trance music also helps them code.

I'm starting to find that listening to repetitive music helps with coding as opposed to lyric based music such as hip-hop.

It would be really interesting to see how many others feel this way and what else helps them focus.

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Definitely feel the same way, I even have the habit of extracting part of songs to make short looping versions to reinforce the effect :)

Otherwise di.fm long mixes usually hit the spot.

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Something else that also works well for me (but not everytime) is long playlists of conference talks, fullscreen on the second screen (usually the ~25 minutes ones work best because it's in-depth enough to be interesting, but not long enough it gets boring, plus if my curiosity gets tickled to look deeper into a topic, I can pause the video to dig deeper before continuing).

I tend to mix both [and it lets me re-use the in-ear headphones that only have one side working anymore]: left ear on talks, right ear on music :)

Oh for sure – instrumental-only for me. Lyrics are too distracting. I like ambient, downbeat, chillout-type stuff. Groove Salad on SomaFM is great: http://somafm.com

Groove salad is the best! Like Pavlov's dogs, hearing groove salad means time to go to work.

I really like Post Rock, its a little slower then techno/trance. Here are some reccomendations:

Godspeed You! Black Emperor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZwQeZh6rP0

God is an Astronaut https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKFDYdaSyng

I really like the latter. Spotify recommended it a few weeks ago.

I also listen to a lot of post rock while programming.

Two more recommendations:

- Explosions in the sky

- Mono ("For My Parents" is my favorite post rock album)

You can't drop all those post rock bands without giving Mogwai a mention

I enjoy the Grateful Dead's long improvisational jams while coding. Try track 10 for example, and be sure to listen to it in its entirety:

https://archive.org/details/gd73-07-27.aud.weiner.gdadt26.26...

I think the theory is that you need to distract a certain part of your brain if you want to get on with a task that requires a degree of concentration. Dance/trance works pretty well for this (for most people). After all music is just a way of tricking the brain into enjoying counting.

Once I tried listening to classical music, I found it very difficult to program to. I decided that the music was too complex and actually used the complex-task part of my brain (which I needed for programming). I also had a similar experience when I tried to play a language learning tape in the background while programming.

It's a fun experiment to run on yourself either way.

I find that whatever music I use for working out works best. I guess there's some link in my brain - the meditative state you get into when you exercise where it's just you, the pain and the music puts your brain into a highly focused state. I discovered that after a while of doing this, whenever I listen to my exercise playlist, it puts me into that same focused state regardless of whether I'm exercising... and I now use the same playlist for highly focused/fast pace programming. Of course it helps to maintain the link between that kind of music and focus if you regularly use it for exercise.

YMMV

If you're still interested, try solo stringed classical pieces while coding. Bach's solo cello suites are a good place to start.

For me, lyrics are fine if I know the music well enough (as in, can recite the lyrics fluidly from memory). Otherwise, I mostly listen to bebop and free jazz. Repetitiveness is usually not welcome, though.

Nothing gets me in focus like the mixes over at musicforprogramming.net

Great selection of ambient/non-invasive electronica.

If that doesn't cut it, Burial and Vangelis always does the trick. And for sessions where it's only some brute force grokking, some uplifting jazz from accujazz.com

I feel that I go too fast, start making mistakes, and missing obvious things, but maybe it's different when creating rather than maintaining. I prefer ambient and chill music when maintaining.

Music with no lyrics for me. Mostly jazz, not really repetitive.

(Uplifting) trance, preferably no lyrics, for me.

Post metal (again no lyrics ) on bad days (more than a year since last.)

Maybe someone with higher level account can make a poll?

Game soundtracks also work well because they're designed to be non-distracting

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