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> I absolutely cannot listen to music with words when I code 1000% My first job was at a design agency, where they understood next to nothing about programmin

by tuxie_ 4y ago

> I absolutely cannot listen to music with words when I code 1000% My first job was at a design agency, where they understood next to nothing about programming (and neither did I tbh). They used to listen to the news and talk shows on the radio all day. It was impossible for me to focus. Literally impossible. On the topic of music, as soon as my brain hears a word it hyper focuses on it like my dog when she smells a treat. It just can't let it go. And if I know the lyrics, forget it, might as well stop coding and start air drumming.

janandonly 4y ago
This is why I made a playlist with music that has ZERO singing/vocals, only rustic sounds: https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/75DHV3ljSZdGdxzDbbYjmY https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/75DHV3ljSZdGdxzDbbYj...
nonrandomstring 4y ago
Did anybody else here ever work in the Tea Rooms in Shoreditch, London? Or any of those "incubators" around the A10 "Silicon Roundabout"? It was a massive warehouse and popular low rent facility filled with startups circa 2010. You could rent anything from a desk to a whole floor. Only one problem. Constant construction noise! Hammering, drilling, sawing, cranes and trucks moving. Shoreditch was a trendy place for tech companies at the time because the whole area was under gentrification. Every coder in that building had ear-buds in and blotted-out the din with louder music. For management meetings we had to go find a basement coffee shop. I met a guy called Julian Treasure and we did some projects on sound management in public spaces. He wrote some stuff about the impact of noise on productivity and quality. The background research looked bona fide. It will scare you. After that I realised that every single line of code produced in the companies I was around at that time was probably broken. When I tried talking about this to other founders and managers people basically shrugged. It may be that "work from home", where you have more control over your acoustic world, may be the best thing to ever happen to code quality.
- wizofaus 4y ago
  That's surely worthy of more serious scientific study. It definitely wouldn't surprise me to see a strong correlation between code quality/ correctness and background distractions (not just audio) at the time of it being written. Or at least between the rate of correct code output and level of distraction. Personally I very rarely find any benefit to having music playing while coding, unless it's to block out other sounds I can't avoid. Whatever increase in immediate enjoyment there might be would be quickly canceled out by the realization I'm not focused 100% on the task at hand and making silly mistakes/taking too long over it.

by tuxie_ 4y ago

janandonly 4y ago

This is why I made a playlist with music that has ZERO singing/vocals, only rustic sounds: https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/75DHV3ljSZdGdxzDbbYjmY https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/75DHV3ljSZdGdxzDbbYj...

nonrandomstring 4y ago

Did anybody else here ever work in the Tea Rooms in Shoreditch, London? Or any of those "incubators" around the A10 "Silicon Roundabout"? It was a massive warehouse and popular low rent facility filled with startups circa 2010. You could rent anything from a desk to a whole floor. Only one problem. Constant construction noise! Hammering, drilling, sawing, cranes and trucks moving. Shoreditch was a trendy place for tech companies at the time because the whole area was under gentrification. Every coder in that building had ear-buds in and blotted-out the din with louder music. For management meetings we had to go find a basement coffee shop. I met a guy called Julian Treasure and we did some projects on sound management in public spaces. He wrote some stuff about the impact of noise on productivity and quality. The background research looked bona fide. It will scare you. After that I realised that every single line of code produced in the companies I was around at that time was probably broken. When I tried talking about this to other founders and managers people basically shrugged. It may be that "work from home", where you have more control over your acoustic world, may be the best thing to ever happen to code quality.

wizofaus 4y ago
That's surely worthy of more serious scientific study. It definitely wouldn't surprise me to see a strong correlation between code quality/ correctness and background distractions (not just audio) at the time of it being written. Or at least between the rate of correct code output and level of distraction. Personally I very rarely find any benefit to having music playing while coding, unless it's to block out other sounds I can't avoid. Whatever increase in immediate enjoyment there might be would be quickly canceled out by the realization I'm not focused 100% on the task at hand and making silly mistakes/taking too long over it.