Coding with Music
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How many people listen to music while they program? Does it make you more productive?
"I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones." Einstein
My answer is... it depends. My office is extremely quiet so I don't feel the need to drown anything out. I usually don't like the distraction of music in the headphones, but ambient music is nice. But when I'm testing in the lab I am fully plugged into my iPod. Nothing helps you through a 600 step test better than the Ramones Anthology!!!!
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How many people listen to music while they program? Does it make you more productive?
"I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones." Einstein
Nah, it's considered "unprofessional" here...because we work in a cube farm, we might disrupt the angry finance people if we play music too loud. On top of that, management is afraid we won't answer the phone when it starts ringing if we have headphones on. I find this slightly ironic, because I don't answer my phone anyway - I prefer to let the calls go to voice mail if it's important. This saves me a lot of time on phone support. :cool:
“Acer, Gateway, and eMachines are the same company now. Great! Now we just need a really big toilet, and we can get rid of all three at once.”
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How many people listen to music while they program? Does it make you more productive?
"I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones." Einstein
I switch between podcasts and music through out the day. It's pretty much the only way that I'll stay on task, otherwise I get bored and surf CNN or something else. Also I can't listen to instrumentals, there actually needs to be lyrics (or in the case of podcasts, someone talking obviously). As soon as there is silence I stop typing for whatever reason.
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I am a musician, and I always listen to music when I program. I believe it not only isolates from outer disturbances like phone calls and so on, but the beat of music helps having a good rythm - it enhances brain activity. Note that I listen to symphonic metal, goth metal and tech trance these days (depending on my mood). Heavy metal rulez!
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How many people listen to music while they program? Does it make you more productive?
"I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones." Einstein
About 10% of the time and it works to keep me motivated, focused and productive. Listening to http://www.pandora.com[^] Should listen more often.
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." - Red Adair
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I am a musician, and I always listen to music when I program. I believe it not only isolates from outer disturbances like phone calls and so on, but the beat of music helps having a good rythm - it enhances brain activity. Note that I listen to symphonic metal, goth metal and tech trance these days (depending on my mood). Heavy metal rulez!
I agree with you, and of course I am a musician as well. Rock and Heavy Metal most of the time, it sure sounds better then the chit chat of people discussing "Reality" TV shows.
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Kschuler wrote:
silence or music without words.
Yes, this is my experience too, although I would say that instead of "no words", then at least "words I don't understand". There seems to be a lot of Bach among CP members --- I have one Gregorian Chant cd that gets a lot of play, and another one with Brazilian lounge music. Other good tracks for getting things done are Allegri/Miserere, Barber/Agnus Dei, Rodrigo/Concerto de Aranjuez, and Tristan and Isolde without the libretto. When I don't need to concentrate then Kruder & Dorfmeister or Bloc Party. I paid for the Bose QC3 noise cancelling headphones --- they block out the hum of the a/c admirably, but not the incessant chatter of my colleagues. I would pay a lot for noise cancelling headphones that go up to at least 8 kHz. Peter.
AmazingMo wrote:
Rodrigo/Concerto de Aranjuez
Good taste my friend. :-)
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How many people listen to music while they program? Does it make you more productive?
"I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones." Einstein
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How many people listen to music while they program? Does it make you more productive?
"I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones." Einstein
I find coding with music puts me into my zone. I find that I'm less distracted by noises coming from the office. Who says that you can't be productive while listening to heavy metal. :cool:
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I agree with you, and of course I am a musician as well. Rock and Heavy Metal most of the time, it sure sounds better then the chit chat of people discussing "Reality" TV shows.
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How many people listen to music while they program? Does it make you more productive?
"I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones." Einstein
i doo listen yup it's
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How many people listen to music while they program? Does it make you more productive?
"I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones." Einstein
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I can't concentrate on ANYTHING in silence, silence drives me nuts! I listen to rock, hard rock and metal when I'm coding but when I'm in the zone I prefer the musical stylings of Mr. John Petrucci and dream theater \m/
Harvey Saayman - South Africa Software Developer .Net, C#, SQL
you.suck = (you.Passion != Programming & you.Occupation == jobTitles.Programmer)
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Excellent taste Harvey! I just saw that theater is releasing a new one this month. Can't wait!
kmoorevs wrote:
I just saw that theater is releasing a new one this month. Can't wait!
If this is true then I share in your enthusiasm :D
Harvey Saayman - South Africa Software Developer .Net, C#, SQL
you.suck = (you.Passion != Programming & you.Occupation == jobTitles.Programmer)
1000100 1101111 1100101 1110011 100000 1110100 1101000 1101001 1110011 100000 1101101 1100101 1100001 1101110 100000 1101001 1101101 100000 1100001 100000 1100111 1100101 1100101 1101011 111111 -
'°' \o/
Never heard of them, but music is music, it's all good. (Except hip hop of course)
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How many people listen to music while they program? Does it make you more productive?
"I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones." Einstein
I find that it varies. Some times when I code I need the music to keep from overhearing other noises in the office or to keep from being bored. However I usually don't actively listen to it, once I do then I focus more on that than my code. If the coding is pretty repetitive stuff then you don't need to concentrate as much so you listen more closely to the music. I usually start the day listening to music and then when I find it lowering my productivity I turn it off until I find the office noises doing the same, then I turn it back on. I don't listen to instrumental stuff, maybe if I did then I'd listen all day, but that gets too boring for me. Might give it a try though. I have a feeling if I listened to a Bach or something of the sort I'd pay that even more attention than the songs I've heard hundreds of times because classical music usually has some sort of a story to it and if you don't listen to it, you get lost and wonder what's going on (purely assumption since, as I stated, I don't listen to it).
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How many people listen to music while they program? Does it make you more productive?
"I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones." Einstein
It depends on how it's being delivered. I can't stand to have headphones or earplugs in that block out anything else. I can listen to music from a speaker at low volume and sometimes bear the set of small speakers that are held near my ears with hooks. I can listen to TV in the background but not on my WinTV without distraction. As for productivity, no one has ever accused me of being productive.
I'm not a programmer but I play one at the office
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As a musician, I can't do this because my attention immediately goes into the music and the code is left just sitting there wondering why it was abandoned. Not terribly productive. :)
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
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How many people listen to music while they program? Does it make you more productive?
"I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones." Einstein
When I used to be able to listen to music while at work, it would mainly be classical or something along those lines. Just enough to semi-tune out the chatter of the surrounding cube farm where people think nothing of yelling to someone 60 feet away. Now, all forms of electronics (flash drives, IPods, cell phones...etc) are now prohibited. So, I try to resort to ear plugs, but have to keep pulling them out every time someone walks up...which is about every 10 minutes or so. When talking to management about noise issues, I might as well be addressing a sack of hammers. :doh: Bob
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If you can afford this - this is the one to buy: Sennheiser HMEC-25-KA Noise cancelling is probably the best you can get from any headset. But it's very expensive $650+ :(
Snorri wrote:
But it's very expensive $650+ :(
In my opinion the best is this one A new era of music listening begins with the launch of revolutionary Nokia Bluetooth Stereo Headset BH-905 with active noise cancellation. http://www.nokia.com/microsites/bh-905[^]
Edgar Prieto Software Engineer