omg… why did they have to butcher such an amazing song… SHHHAAATTTNNEERRRRRRR1!~!1~!!!
oh and Jeff, if you’re a sick, sick man… send the doctor my way. this stuff isn’t all that bad. i actually kind of feel a desire to sing along to tie a yellow ribbon hmmmm…
gonna need a double enema please after this LOL.
Heavy metal. Streaming. Free. Without commercials.
We have a fairly small office with all the people in the same open space. There’s a certain radio station that’s on all day long around the year at our office, and they have a huge amount of variation in what the play, often leaning away from mainstream stuff. If there’s ever a song someone really doesn’t like, we just put up because that’s a very rare occasion and we know it’ll be over after that song anyway. (As a side note, I’ve also found many new artists that I like, that I would not have run into through my usual channels, or that I would’ve rejected based on a short initial impression.)
If we didn’t have the radio on I suspect the silence would become far too awkward and everyone would start using headphones, and then communication would be obstructed since when someone’s listening on headphones it’s a lot more intimate and interrupting them feels like you’re invading their privacy.
At one time, when I started a new job, I was asked what my favorite music was. Frank Zappa, of course, and the response was: This can be fun. I never dared to put Zappa on at a decent volume, mostly because I prefer to work in silence.
Maarten
Torturing people with horrendous music (subjective) would earn you a buildmeister job in most places and your health insurance premium would go up.
I’d love to bring my ping pong table for a quick ping pong thing between the builds but alas.
Music is nice, but if you can code, you can code, music or not?
Isn’t code the music we play? Or is code just a friggin paycheck to you?
That picture of a BASF C60 tape is photoshopped, badly.
BS levies on this blog has been washed away long time ago.
I agree with Qvasi and Mr. Latt on this one. Most of the time, listening to music is just too distracting for any serious programming, but it depends on the type of music and the type of work I am doing. If I am just hammering out simple code that has been planned well (i.e. designed), then some of my favorite music will often help me flow, but when working on something that requires full concentration, music is often distracting. To me, lyrics is an important part of music, so if I hear a song with unknown lyrics, my brain will automatically allocate resources to decoding the words and phrases, stealing attention from the current task.
I find that music can be a very useful for increasing productivity and general well-being while working, but only when I decide to listen to it myself. Random music playing in the office can be seriously annoying, especially if it’s not your kind of music or you are not in the mood for that kind at the time.
Also, using headphones (with music) to help you concentrate (by blocking out other sounds) can be a sign that your work environment is actually too noisy in the first place.
Since I discovered www.xtcradio.com about 2 years ago, I listen to it almost every afternoon, with my headphones. It can really bring me into a kind of ‘total focus’ zone, where excellent code flows out freely. Warning: addictive. : )
You know that l33t music that plays when you fire up a keygen? There’s an entire website devoted to it: a href=http://www.keygenmusic.net/?lang=enKeygen music!/a Try blasting that in the office. Not that I would know what keygens really sound like…
The last gig I had where we were there were no non-code-monkeys in the building, we had one CD player that fed speakers in every room; anyone was free to play anything they wanted. This had its ups and its downs, as Rammstein was invariably answered by Phish, but it also led to some surprising crowd favorites, including both O Brother Where Art Thou soundtracks…
Nowadays, being a lone coder surrounded by speakerphones, conference rooms, the door to the outside used regularly by the smokers (and the beeps it emits whenever anyone comes back in), etc, I find the potential distraction of the music to be much less of a productivity-sink than the very real human distractions that I’m surrounded by.
Like others have mentioned, though, I can’t have a new album playing while I’m trying to code, but stuff I know well helps.
Currently on the iPod, in shuffle mode:
Dead Can Dance: Best Of 1981-1998
Rush: 2112, Roll the Bones, Caress of Steel
Metallica: Justice
The Nightwatchman (Tom Morello): One Man Revolution
No Doubt: Tragic Kingdom
Ozzy: Live at Budokan
Paul Simon: Rhythm of the Saints
White Zombie: La Sexorcisto
White Stripes: Walking With a Ghost
Loretta Lynn: Van Lear Rose
Crystal Method: Legion of Boom, Tweekend
Chemical Brothers: Surrender
plus a carp-load more, but you get the idea.
For this reason, you may not be able to code hard if you are
listening music, because it occupies the same area in your brain.
Or, since it’s stimulating the part of the brain you need to use anyway, it will increase your ability to write code. It really depends on the person. Some people need a higher level of stimulation to maintain the breakneck pace that so many of us seem doomed to work.
For that reason, many programmers listen too noisy music like metal
or hard rock. It is difficult to concentrate all notes of this kind
of music, so you don’t focus on music. It is just better for
isolating programmer from outside world.
You’d be surprised. As a musician, I’ve spent a great deal of my life picking out the notes in Metallica, Testament, Napalm Death, and Carcass songs. I not only hear every note, I hear the lines split between the instruments. This is especially prevalent because my first instrument was the bass guitar, which is generally buried in the mix (especially on a band’s first couple of albums, before they have good engineers, or when their bassist is willing to be buried).
If I want something that sounds more like a sonic wall of noise I tend towards industrial music. When a significant amount of the music is electronically generated noise and samples, there’s not much to distinguish.
When I’m programming, the music’s just there to keep out the constant variations in the surrounding environment. There’s no need to hear the beeps when people key into the building, the noises people make as they come and go from their offices, and the sounds the air conditioner makes as it kicks on and off throughout the day.
its me or the logo on the tape started looking like a PHB?
Wait, you mean there’s something wrong with Alvin and the Chipmunks?
I recommend The Animator’s Survival Kit (http://www.amazon.com/Animators-Survival-Kit-Richard-Williams/dp/0571202284/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1218550186sr=8-1)
. Since I read it, I haven’t listened to music while working.
Oh dear Brian others… ambient music for coding? This would explain some of the wishy-washy code out there
Two words… Roger Miller
This is truly wonderful. Thank you! 
… Feeeeeeeelings…
That would drive me batty. I can’t code with any sounds at all… anyone who distracts easily like me would go nuts, or not get anything done… or both.
It takes too long to find value-added content.
So, a couple of suggestions instead of just complaining:
- Dvorak gives some advice on the topic: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2327852,00.asp
- maybe you/Jeff could add a Featured Comments section like http://thedailywtf.com/ has.