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Autism and Programmers
- DenisM 17y agoLou has to have the right music in his head to spot his patterns and I, like many developers, have experience of getting into the zone with the help of familiar ambient music. It’s as if the regularity of the music, it’s lack of surprising contrast, drowns out the rhythmless noise of our environment. The alternative is to completely remove all noise... Any suggestions on this kind of ambient music? Thanks! EDIT: I'm looking for specific suggestions of which artists/collections/radio channels worked best for you. Thanks to all who replied!
- sp332 17y agoBrian Eno has an extra feature to his ambient music. Occasionally there will be a little note out of place, a tiny surprise. He says this is to keep you from falling asleep, or rouse you out of a daydream you may have fallen into. If you're really concentrating, this little "bump" in the music probably won't even register. This is featured in "Music for Airports" (good for busy places), and "Discreet Music" (takes some getting used to, but fades solidly into subconsciousness after a few minutes).
- caudicus 17y agoOn iTunes you can go to Radio -> Ambient and there are a bunch of stations that play the style of music. I'm a fan of StillStream and Drone Zone.
- prodigal_erik 17y agoPandora also has a good selection of electronica and ambient music, and can store and learn what you like in a custom "station".
- kleevr 17y agoSometimes I'll play trance ambient just loud enough to smooth over the environmental noise while coding: http://www.hbr1.com/perl/apax.cgi?run=jorbis&station= http://www.hbr1.com/perl/apax.cgi?run=jorbis&station=
- perneto 17y agodjbolivia.ca - he even has a few mixes expressly made for programmers.
- draegtun 17y agoI often listen to... David Sylvian - Look for albums: "Camphor", "Alchemy" & "Approaching Silence" Brian Eno - His Ambient collection. and some varied classical music. Strangely when I get into rhythm I tend to switch to something more "driving" like Radiohead
- Adlai 17y agoAm I the odd one out in listening to jazz while I code?
- tlrobinson 17y agoHere's a few related threads: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=139901 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=139901 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=167076 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=167076 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=132026 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=132026
- Spic 17y agoI usually listen to the di.fm stations, without any strong preference to any one in particular. Some days chillout or ambient works best, while sometimes its goapsy which won't let you out of the zone.
- jefurii 17y agoAnything by Radiohead. Steve Reich "Music for 18 Musicians" - single hour-long track. Rachmaninoff "All Night Vigil". Cabaret Voltaire "Plasticity". John Coltrane "A Love Supreme" Anything by Stereolab. Tim Hecker "Harmony in Ultraviolet". late-1960s cool jazz (Miles, Herbie, Freddie Hubbard, etc) Most stuff by Bach. Older stuff by Autechre. Philip Glass "Koyaanisqatsi" - another hour-long track; can't play it too loud though or it gets tiring.
- sanand 17y agoBaroque music generally does it for me. Bach is the exception. When I listen to his more abstract works -- the keyboard partitas, the violin partitas, the well-tempered clavier, the english and french suites, goldberg, the art of the fugue, a musical offering, inventions and sinfonias -- I become so totally absorbed that I just cannot do anything else or even think any other thoughts. Is this what is called /samadhi/?
- branden 17y agoBut what happens if you create a concentration of left brain thinkers? Imagine if an industry sprang up that relied on such people, resulting in a dense population of super-geeks. So dense that they started breeding little geeks. If autism is genetic, as it we are starting to believe it is, would this not cause an increase in the cases of people being born with traits from the autistic spectrum? This theory was proposed in a paper by Simon Baron-Cohen (ref: http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news/Systemizers-Have-A-Higher-Risk-Of-Children-Suffering-From-Autism-7432-1/ http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news/Systemizers-Have-A...). His study showed that children of "high-systemizers" were more likely to be autistic. If this is true, it would explain quite a bit. The rise in autism rates seems to match the growth of the tech industry and the value of "knowledge workers."
- kansando 17y agoAutism is more complex than that. See for example http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=vitamin-d-and-autism http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=vitamin-d-a.... One of the big mysteries is that Somali immigrants to the US and Sweden have a much higher rate of autism than their native counterparts. Other factors implicated include increasing parents age at time of birth(mother's and father's), more frequent ultrasounds, more chemical environment, etc. Once you start to think through each factor, the N^2 effect of geeks marrying other geeks is unlikely to explain the 5-10X increase in autism over the last 20 years.
- cabalamat 17y ago> One of the big mysteries is that Somali immigrants to the US and Sweden have a much higher rate of autism than their native counterparts. Given that Somalia lacks a government, I would imagine health care there is rudimentary, and it's likely that autism (and other conditions) is under-diagnosed.
- sridharvembu 17y agoThis whole autism-geek connection is a useless myth. I have a son with autism, and we know a lot of parents with autism. Parents come from every income range, social class, profession and "geek orientation". And contrary to another myth, most autistic kids (the vast majority) have no savant skills. It is a disease. The ones who recover do tell how they felt trapped inside. For those of you who have young children or planning to have children, here is a suggestion: investigate just how many vaccines we are giving kids these days, and compare that to how many were given 25-30 years ago. Educate yourself - I wish I had. I trusted the "system" implicitly, without realizing that the average doctor and certainly the average pediatrician is an unthinking protocol pusher. The average pediatricians typical workload could be automated. Enough said.
- emmett 17y agoFor those of you who have young children or planning to have children, here is a suggestion: investigate just how many cellphones we carry around these days, and compare that to how many were around 25-30 years ago.
- asciilifeform 17y ago> investigate just how many cellphones we carry Or how many pirates there are on the high seas. The connection between any kind of background EM and any human disease was discredited many years ago (and in fact was proposed by one specific crackpot.)
- menloparkbum 17y agoHow many vaccines do kids get these days vs. how many were given 30 years ago?
- trapper 17y agoSeriously, while I feel for you, get the facts. There is no evidence linking autism to vaccines. While dosing frequency has increased, dosing volume has decreased. Not only that, even if you are right, a lot more kids would die from the vaccinated diseases if we lose herd immunity as a whole. Don't you find it the least bit suspicious that the only people who "figured out" this mystery are quacks with books and supplements to sell? Isn't it much more likely to be caused by our terrible food, chemical-laced water or other modern issues like proximity to high-strength EM?
- saurabh 17y agoJust out of curiousity, does anyone here listen to old Bollywood songs while coding; the likes of Kishore Kumar and such? They are very melodious.