Worse than listening to music that you don't like is listening to music you don't like blasting out of headphone!

My coworkers and I used to do essentially the same thing with the first Spin Doctors album. We called it Spin Doctors Sunday.

Jeff,

Many years ago you introduced me to this beautiful boxed set: http://www.amazon.com/Funk-Box-Various-Artists-Soul/dp/B000050MGO/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1218437633&sr=8-1

I haven't looked back since.

At one office, we actually had Opera Friday... All opera, 7am to midnight.

...I think I still have nightmares from that one.

'Background coding music for the team'???
Maybe I'm just a music-nazi, but that sounds like a total recipe for disaster.
There couldn't possibly be a quicker way to create dischord (no pun intended) amongst work mates.
The chances of 'You got some of your Tito Puente in my Slayer. No, you got some of your Slayer on my Tito Puente. Hey! This actually sounds good' are close to zero.
Like I said though, I'm a music-nazi.

I find the only music to code by is music I already know. Anything new is too distractng, and removes my mind from the problem at hand. Loud rock when the going is good, something gentle when things are tricky.

And Feelings is a wonderful piece of music :-)

For those that would like to experience the full horror of this music...
http://www.mixwit.com/widgets/e65bc88e4706d1652b3c845336fc4acc

Wow--I knew all but one of those! (I'm not sure what that means, other than I'm old...)

Nothing or muzak. Something passive to everyone.

I prefer the head phones, bad-taste/humour music doesn't work for me... Preferably coding music should be without lyrics, or at least in a language I don't understand (or in English but mixed low, mumbled and otherwise hard to notice), otherwise it distracts me too much. Lyrics in norwegian, my mothertounge, doesn't work at all because I can't just NOT hear what they say.

BTW what timezone are you posting from? This post appeared less than half an hour ago, ca 08:30 UTC+1 August 11. Is there really a timezone UTC-32 ???

anon, this is awesome! Thank you! Rockin' it now..

http://www.mixwit.com/widgets/e65bc88e4706d1652b3c845336fc4acc

I wasn't kidding when I said I started to like this music.

In other news, I am a sick, sick man. Send help.

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.

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

I agree with Qvasi and Mr. Latté 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. : )

I find programming quite hard. If I listen to music and try to program it gets harder. I simply cannot fathom why anyone would want to distract themselves whilst doing such mentally challenging work.

Now, noise cancelling headphones used in order to get complete quiet I can understand.

Once upon a time, I worked for a big telecom company, load-testing their next applications.

The thing is, while you wait for the result of a test, there's not very much you can do.

So, the guy with time on his hands would play the first few seconds of a song (a regular song, a cartoon opening, a movie soundtrack...), and the first in the room to state the name would get one point.

At the end of the day, we would count the points, and the winner would buy drinks for our little group.

Best game ever. At the time, we had a 250Go hard-drive full of MP3s just for that.

Back in 2000, in my first room at my office, I was the only one with a sound card, and when I was asked to put on some music I tuned in a Country web radio, for the horror of my roommates - Country music is not so popular here in Italy ;-)

In this period, I alternate the following themes, depending on my mood:

- 80's love rock songs (Bad English, Survivors, John Waite, REO Speedwagon, ...)
- Animetal, a Japanese heavy metal 70's anime cover band... can't live without Mazinger, Grendizer and Daltanious... who's the sick one now? :-)
- Red Bank Night, a Springsteen / Bon Jovi live concert from 1998

Overall, I agree with what Anders said: if you pick the music for your mood, it's a great productivity boost; random music is just annoying.

> Anything new is too distractng, and removes my mind from the problem at hand. Loud rock when the going is good, something gentle when things are tricky.
Mr Latté

> 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
Anders Sandvig

I've thought a bit about this lately. I like listening to movie soundtracks because they don't have any lyrics you can concentrate on. Instead you focus on the programming. And, as Mr Latté said, there are two situations; If I know exactly how to solve the problem and I'm just hammering out the solution, then I want something like loud rock (something fast), but when I need to solve a problem, then I need to listen to something slow and quiet.

So I've thought about making a playlist kinda program that measures the number of keys you press per 10 second. Then it matches the music played with the speed you are typing; if you type fast, fast music is played, if you type slow, slow music is played.

I consider it a deadly sin to play "background" music that your coworkers can hear, unless they all explicitly asked for it. It doesn't matter how good or bad the music is, when some difficult problem needs my full attention then it has to be fairly quiet around me. I do listen to music when I can (compiling!), but always using headphones.

Sure you can put on a Barry White CD as an office joke, but having to listen to it all day should be banned by the Geneva convention.

As for the real topic, when I do something easy but tedious, I like to listen to music I know very well. I don't have to concentrate on the lyrics or the music, it's just a background tune. It helps me getting in the zone.

Music to watch code grow by:

1. When trying to resolve an unknown issue: Classical (Mozart/Beethoven etc).
2. When trying to do a well known repetitive task but quickly: Dance/Trance/Rave (no words)
3. When trying to fix a problem you know the issue to but need to work quick: rock.

I use different music for different things.

man, what is your excuse? the doctor you need is dr kavorkian to releive you agony. i use bbc cnn or my collection of podcasts as back ground. speaking of which, what happened to the stackoverflow podcast?

Funny, I've had a similar conversation with other developers about what music is best to listen to while coding.

My personal favourite is something mellow but funky without much lyrics.

I found an album called "A night at the playboy Mansion" to be absolutely perfect for this !

I listen to last.fm and set the tags to whatever I'm feeling at the time. Like others have already said, classical when I'm trying to concentrate and rock when I'm speeding along.

Hey.. Mister!... Tambourine, Man, play!.. a song!.. for, me!

:D

Since you introduced me to Flight of the Conchords, almost nothing else has graced my headphones. Thanks man :)

Of course, any Brit of a certain age (er, like me, if I'm brutally honest) will know that "Billy" was originally a Paper Lace track, but the Donaldson cover (of which I was not aware for obvious geographic reasons) was released first in the States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Don%27t_Be_a_Hero

As a quintessentially ghastly 70's pop group, I think having two Paper Lace songs in the list is entirely appropriate.

Yay the Lace!

Oh, and damn you to Heck for putting that song back into my brain.

Being both a programmer and an amateur musician (www.voind.com), having any music playing reduces my productivity in more than half.

Whenever I listen to music (new or old) I disassemble it, analize it, stare at it, examine its structure, the way everything works together, the emotions it triggers, etc... Too much to still stay focused on coding. In fact when I am listening to music it takes me all my mental capabilities

It is like having a couple making love all day next to you while you're coding. Depending on how much you like that activity it would either distract you and/or make you sick and tired of that at the end of the day.

I am moving to another job and one of the "my requirements" was to have a music-free environment.

A fun/funny post today, Jeff. Thanks. I spent my childhood listening to that music. Imagine being exposed to that stuff as a child. Maybe that’s why I rarely listen to music, and when I do it’s almost always jazz.

http://somafm.com/ is my favourite.
Groove Salad & Beat Blender are the best for me, also Drone Zone works if I want something that is guaranteed not to distract me (no lyrics, usually no beat).

Well, when you suffer dyslexia, -which is not as we think in France an excuse disguised in a pathology- you focus more easily when doing more than one thing at a time. So when concentration for programmation is required music is a must have.

You would think people having problem in reading/writing should not be oriented at first to computer science.

But even though we do make more than average «spelling» mistakes ( = instead of ==, forgeting to close "), doing poorly under exams-like conditions, and get stuck with easy problems, we are not disabled people. It seems we are just different ; we do think differently thus we can for instance solve naturally some problems others can't.

Therefore music is one of my everyday working tool just. And I guess I am not the only one.

Still thinking that open space is a great productivity crusher because they are so noisy and they higher the probability someone is gonna interrupt you while you have one phase of pure concentration.

For most people I don't think music is the solution but instead that open spaces are the problem.

I'm quite happy that the radio is on a channel I like.

Having to hear bad music all day, that's just depressing...

Hey! What’s wrong with Starland Vocal Band?

We tend to have dance/ambient music playing in the studio (or Radiohead - In Rainbows, an album I loved until the tech director decided to play it on repeat for 3 weeks!) so I tend to pop my earphones on and listen to my own stuff.

Normally it's indie or punk rock, but it differs quite a bit. At the moment my guilty pleasure is Alphabeat, cheesy cheesy pop...but so happy and bouncy if find it good to work to.

You forgot Rick Astley.

I tried to code to Led Zepplin once... wow, that was a BIG mistake!

I can listen to music while programming only if there are no vocals. I don't know what it is about the human voice; it seems as though it engages your brain on a subconscious level somehow. If there is any singing with the music, I completely lose the ability to focus.

I don't often work with other people, and in this case I think it's probably a good thing, a quick look at my *current* play list (party shuffle) in iTunes looks like and you'll understand.
http://www2.unkwndesign.com/pics/iTunes.png

The last time I had someone here they nearly went nuts.

Forget about music. I dont like hearing music anyways. I put my VLC-player in the taskbar and "listen" to TV-Series like Magnum P.I., Seinfeld or a recorded documentary. You cant catch much of the plot, but it is a nice background to listen to.

Zeppelin's "Presence" is great to code to, I recently discovered.

Mauro, you must be a musical kindred spirit, you do exactly the same as myself! For (2) check out Mouse on Mars, Stewart Walker, Delarosa and Asora, Baby Mammoth, Ott, Tripswitch. For (1) check out Kino, Frost's "Milliontown", Ozrics of course and Enter Shikari.

While we're on music - can anyone recommend classical music that would appeal given an interest in symphonic prog rock?! I should add that I think Overture to Marriage of Figaro is an amazing piece.

I can't bear to listen to any music while I work - it's too distracting. I've tried every genre and they all interrupt my concentration. I used to think I was strange, given how many programmers do listen to music while working, but then I read a quote by Milt Kahl (http://legends.disney.go.com/legends/detail?key=Milt+Kahl) who, when asked what music he listened to while working, said "I’m not smart enough to do two things at once". I guess I'm not smart enough either.

I usually have Internet radio running. Right now I like listen to Japanese radio. Why? Because I don't understand a word. This might sound stupid, but when I can understand the lyrics, my mind starts "listening to them", this distracts my focus from code to the lyrics... bad stuff.

But since I don't speak Japanese, listen to Jap. Music is like listening to orchestral music without lyrics at all :-) People are saying and singing something, but I usually have no idea what they are saying or signing. And I like this JPOP sound - though it's not all pop music. If you like really hard heavy metal, search for the Japanese band "Maximum the Hormone" (there are some music clips from theme on YouTube); I like these guys.

Sugoi ^_^
(that means "great", often used as "cool" - okay, maybe I understand a couple of words)

Great set of tracks, I can't stop laughing while listening that ... you made this Monday much more bright! I have to try to break coworkers in my office as well! :-)

Thanks for the Mixwit link. Love that music. Of course, if someone started pumping ANY music out across a programming pen, I'd have to quit. You want music, use some headphones.

@Mecki: Check out Groove Salad on www.somafm.com. No lyrics, just wonderful soundscapes.

This brings back memories, Jeff... horrible, horrible memories.

In 1995, the only guy with a sound-card in our office would play Mr Tambourine Man or, worse, so much worse, Lucy In The Sky with Diamonds at least once a day, whenever he felt we were coding too productively.

The Swedish Chef from The Muppets, making Chocolate Moose, was played at least twice a day.

At least he only played Leonard Nimoy's recordings on rare occasions.

congratulations, youve discovered that musical taste is largely a matter of exposure, which is exactly why criticising musical taste in the first place is idiotic since its so intrinsically subjective. if the rest of the world was willing to subject themselves to this sort of thing perhaps wed have less sanctimonious fucktards running around.

I listed to some of the mixwit of those songs. Ugggg :(

A few of them were OK, but some were REALLY bad. I'm glad I didn't work in your office -- I would have had to change jobs.

About 10 years ago I had a project on such an unrealistic deadline (they set the deadline before anyone even could define the feature) that managment let me work from home so I could put in 14 hour days for 2 weeks straight.

One of the songs I listened to was "Time Is..." (ticking away) http://tinyurl.com/67yxbd by DC Talk. Guess I listened to it was on their "Free At Last" CD, but somehow, "Time is ticking away" just meant a lot to me.

I had my friend compose music to code by..

you can listen here : www.specialdirt.com/music.html

particularly "Grateful at 3am"

Maybe it's just me, but I'm still amazed that we aren't allowed to listen to music here. It's written somewhere in the employee handbook that listening to music on the job is "unprofessional." Or something to that effect. All I know is that I earned myself a good a$$-chewing when I left WinAmp open on my machine after lunch, and my boss happened to walk in and see it on my screen. :(

Whoa, those Windows NT guys are wild and crazy-- blasting that "raucous heavy metal" band Journey in the server room. Watch out for these guys at the office xmas party!

Listening to trance music makes me more productive. I've also come across other mentions of trance music as a productivity boost. I suspect it may be because the music does not require much attention and energizes you with its fast bpm.

Starting about October, a past coworker of mine would start playing some wretched Christmas song by 'The Waitresses'. It would go non stop until new years. It gets in your head no matter how much you hate it, and you find yourself humming it everywhere you go no matter how much you loathe yourself for it.

Another vote for SomaFM, tho' I prefer the Space Station channel. The electronic soundscapes really help (me) set the mood for working at the computer.

My coworker uses Jingle Cats. His office shares a wall with our boss (CIO) and it just about drove the guy nuts. Meanwhile, my coworker is sitting there cranking it up all the time.

My coworkers and I used to have an "End of Day" mix that included Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back".

It became a unifying trend that really helped ease stress.

I love listening to music while I code. I've been listening to "Phish - A Live One" since I started playing with QBasic. It's a great cd (2 cds) that just plays on in the background for hours. On the other end of the spectrum, I like Rage Against the Machine at high volume. Since I'm very familiar with their music, it doesn't distract me at all. I suppose you could say I grok RATM. Good times...

A few years ago I sat across from one of the network guys and he would play John Mayer over and over. I hate that guy now. John Mayer that is and the network guy a bit too.

What could be better to code by than an album written entirely by a Software Engineer?

I hate to shamelessly self promote my own stuff, but instrumental music is proven to help concentration and I wrote and released an entire instrumental album by myself, playing all the instruments and mixing it all using Cubase.

Check it out, a lot of my friends code to it. I only tried it once and I couldn't get over "I wish I had done this, I should have tried this instead," etc.

http://www.amazon.com/Infinity/dp/B001CX3BX2/ref=dm_ap_alb1?ie=UTF8&qid=1217586935&sr=8-1

I accidentally posted this on another article first, sorry about that.

This may be an unpopular opinion - but everyone I know that is constantly listening to music while they code are slow and unproductive. Furthermore, on the flip side, the people that don't are more focused on thier work and are more productive. I've noticed the productivity difference within myself as well. If I have music on, without headphones, at a very low volume - it makes good background noise and I can still concentrate. Of course there are exceptions to every rule, but I believe that we are a culture obsessed with entertainment, and this tendency of people to always be listening to music is a major sign of that. People used to think clearly and concentrate a lot more than they do now. Think about how much you could have done/learned/experienced if you would take your headphones off once in a while and keep your TV off in the evenings.

I used to work in the military and deployed many times oversees, usually under the command of a slightly twisted captain who controlled the little operations room I worked in with constant harassment and intimidation. One night though, me and a few of my comrades were forced to work very late to finish up a project, and we were all extremely tired and stressed out. Our boss, though, shockingly, seemed to be in a rare good mood, and he asked us if we'd like to listen to some soothing music to cut down on the tension we were feeling. For a moment I thought, "is it possible this man has a heart, after all?" There was a cd player in the corner and he proceeded to put in Blues Traveler. I thought, well ok, I don't really like Blues Traveler, but a little music is better than dead air.
However, what we didn't know is that throughout the entire night, he would play the single "Run-Around" over and over again, continuously all night long! By the second hour that song became a chisel that constantly pounded into my head, making me wish I were temporarily deaf.
Now, of course, I hate that song.

Indeed.

Somehow, even when facing REALLY SERIOUS problems when working, listening to music is much better than the void of silence. Music helps me (and the people around me) loosen up, and that's a huge moral boost.

Besides, group music helps the group integrate better. It's really fun!

The biggest comment I have is about the excerpt from "Show Stopper! The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft.".

Journey is Heavy Metal?!? I guess this would place Elton John and Kenny G into the "Hard Rock" category? rofl!

With comments like that, in a book, no less, no wonder we geeks are always portrayed as being out of touch with "normal" people in movies, etc.

I like music too much to use it as background music while programming. Either I'm listening to it, or I'm not. If I'm not listening to it, it might as well be off. If I AM listening to it, I'm not thinking.

I telecommute, so I don't have to worry about bothering co-workers with my music. I usually like to listen to music with non-english lyrics, so I don't get distracted by the lyrics. For heavy debugging sessions, I like raucous West African music.

I used to listen to Mortal Kombat soundtrack... It put me in the mood to code, or FINISH someone..

I listen to my hand-picked rock/metal playlist at Finetune. It keeps me happy in an otherwise dark and dingy world. I highly (and biasly) recommend it. It also sounds good at high volumes.

http://www.finetune.com/playlist/1429712

And funny...I just dug out my Mortal Kombat CD the other night at home. That was a pretty solid soundtrack and probably did better than the movie.

What's almost as bad as having to listen to those awful songs is to have one of them stuck in your head for the rest of the day. Attack of the killer earworms! Yikes.

I like ambient music at work (e.g., Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream). Doesn't require my undivided attention, so not distracting. And not enough melody for any of it to stay in my head later on. :)

Hm,

"Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree - Dawn" is a pretty nice track, though

i can see myself driving towards the sunset on a desert road, as in the end track of a movie.
:D brings tears to my eyes :D

At track 4 my soul broke in two and i stopped listening. Thanks for this all time classic

If you think the Shatner version of Tamborine Man is great, then clearly you've never listened to the Chipmunks' rendition of that timeless classic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipmunks_%C3%A0_Go-Go

> Muskrat Love - Captain & Tennille

OMG. That reminds me: Back when I was in 4th grade (before I developed any taste whatsoever) I spent my allowance money to buy K-Tel's album Muskrat Love. Sadly I can't find a playlist from it online, but it was filled with songs like that.

Dang. I thought I'd forgotten that. I guess I'll have to work harder. :-)

Nothing like a little light Classical or even regular Classical to put me in the programming frame of mind. Sometimes I rock to the 70's and 80's too when I'm really getting things done... but if I need concentration, Classical assists me when it's on low.

Cheers

I forgot to mention, varying kinds of techno can really pep up my attitude when I've been staring at the computer for so long. So, here's my run down:
Concentration: Classical
Piping up: Techno
Mellowing out: 70's - 80's Rock

Cheers

> Journey is Heavy Metal?!? I guess this would place Elton John and Kenny G into the "Hard Rock" category? rofl!

Its all a matter of persepctive. Back in the late 70's they were considered that (what can I say, it was a horrid, horrid time for music). If you look at the soundtrack to Heavy Metal, you'll see Journey on it.

Today? No.

I usually just throw on some U2 while coding. Nothing exotic, but it works.

I listen to trance, electronica, "alternative chill", etc... These forms of music are what I call "brain massage".

Thanks for including reference the Shatner album as it helps me rid my head of "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" (which began playing over and over in my head as soon as I read your post)

"You Klingon bastard... you killed my son!"

I guess I'm the "Michael Bolton" around here. I like to listen to rap music (not radio-play rap, but straight up gansta rap). When I'm in the zone, I usually don't notice the music playing, however I still think your brain hears it. I love programming, however there are many times where you just find yourself doing mundane tasks, and that music just get's me amped.

The local classic rock station used to have an annual "All Time Worst Song" contest and inevitably the 3 finalists were all from the "Shatner" genre, e.g.

Shatner's Mr. Tambourine Man
Leonard Nimoy's rendition of "Proud Mary"
George Burns singing "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"

I started working in my current company about a year ago, and a few weeks later I started sending to some jobmates my own selection of music: a different song each day (well, I don't send the song but a link to a mp3 file in a shared folder).
8 h 35 min of music so far, songs that are somehow special for me. For me, that's the best music for programming.

Feelings is awesome.

Filini wrote:

> when I was asked to put on some music I tuned in a Country web
> radio, for the horror of my roommates - Country music is
> not so popular here in Italy ;-)

It isn't as popular as you might think where I am at either... Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Personally I like to code to dance, techno, electronic, or ambient. Pretty much anything without too much in the lyric department to distract me.

Music that is distracting is hard to code with.

For me, this is anything with vocals in it since i tend to concentrate on the words a lot.

a lot of laid back electronic music that is repetitive and not annoying is good to listen to since it puts you in a consistent flow that can resemble a hypnotic trance.

I've listened to a whole lot of music where I work and I find classical the best for programming, it just seems to stimulate the brain in the right way for writing code at least; my brain.

I've also found that volume has a lot to do with distraction, the higher the volume the greater the distraction.

Since one has to play rock a high volume levels in order for it to sound decent and classical can be played at much lower volume levels in order to sound decent then this may have some effect although, I play classical when I’m programming at high volume levels and it still does not distract me.

The one thing I cannot listen to while programming is rap; It just continuously breaks my train of thought…

For long hours deep, it's all Radiohead all the time. Get some concerts on http://bt.etree.org, incidentally.

For fixing problems, I shuffle through my whole catalog.

I agree mac. I get sleepy without the vocals though so I opt for opera. Since I don't speak Italian or Russian or French I do not even try to listen to the words and yet it has much more energy than light jazz or muzak or classical. I know that there are high energy instrumental pieces out there but those just make me want to shut down and go outside. Too much energy. Same with the techno stuff. I'd think about going to the club instead of work.

I used to share a room in an apartment with 3 other people. One of them used to listen from time to time manele http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manele . Here are some examples:
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUEYz-ybpUg (sounds a bit like opera music)
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLZUQofJQNE&feature=related
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dJurBil-bM

They're horrible, but it was kind of fun to listen to this stuff.

I listen to "Slay Radio" through a shoutcast stream. Remixes of old Commodore 64/Amiga classics. It's perfect for coding, and they have a great live show called "The Sunday Service" where Reyn Owenhand takes requests from IRC - he will play pretty much any song in any style with a full set of instruments and a looper - LIVE! (http://www.reyn.net/)

Dude, what's wrong with you? "The Night Chicago Died" is an absolute, unshakable classic.

That 70's song selection does suck a lot. I listen with headphones to Jack Johnson, Pearl Jam and Live.

I have headphones on all day because our technical support department is in the same room. We're all in cubicles and the headphones are the only way I can block out the conversations of my coworkers. I find that listening to anything with a good beat and no lyrics works best for me. I'm currently on this Dance/Electronic kick. We'll see how long that lasts.

This post, and comments, is a real eye-opener! I thought all us, ah... senior, coders were Dead Heads!

I feel compelled to add my 2 cents to this already burgeoning list of comments - finding this article hot on the heels of a debate in my office of the pros and cons of an office jukebox.

I prefer silence to work to, but failing that anything minimal, electronic, with no lyrics. Something metronomic just ticking away in my headphones is fine. (As I type this, I can *already* hear what sounds like "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree" on the office stero in response to this article I just forwarded. What have I done?!!!) :D

I live in a fraternity with 6 other people. This music can't even get to me.

I listen to all varieties of metal when I code. My playlist is massive and I just hit random and let it go. If I am in a team environment I'll either use headphones or turn the volume so low the only way to hear it is to be sitting in my chair. Music for the most part though helps. My roommate listens to beats, so you can imagine how incompatible his music taste is with mine, but whenever he has his music on loud it doesn't bother me at all. Sometimes I even prefer it when coding.

Only instrumental music played here at Smurf Developer Central. Lyrics cause the brain to wander too much. Don't care if it is 'classical' or instrumental bluegrass, as long as there are no words.

All that other stuff is ok... But "The Transformed Man"?
That's just wrong....

For pure fun try the When Pigs Fly CD (http://www.dynamicmusic.com/pigsflycd/mainpage.html).

You haven't heard anything until you've heard Ani DiFranco and Jackie Chan (yes that one) sing Unforgettable

"It was a raucous album by the rock group Journey. One morning Shannon slapped on Journey, and heavy metal sounds filled the lab."

Clearly this book was written by a Country-Western fan ("What kind of music do you usually have here?" "Oh, we have both kinds. Country. AND Western."). I'm not sure there are many people who would describe Journey as 'heavy metal.'

(T.E.D. wrote:
"Its all a matter of perspective. Back in the late 70's they were considered that (what can I say, it was a horrid, horrid time for music). If you look at the soundtrack to Heavy Metal, you'll see Journey on it.
Today? No."

Of course, this book was written in 1994 about events in the 90's... so the author really had no excuse.)

For myself, I usually find that a classical piece with a grand, majestic finale works best. Nothing quite like the final movements of Mahler's symphony #1 or Beethoven's Ninth to really focus my mind.

I had a co-worked I shared a cubicle with few years back. He was always using speaker phone even when he didn't have anything to say. He would be on a speaker call for a couple hours a day and I would just have to sit there and listen. I started grumbling about it and we had a few discussions but he didn't stop doing it. So one day I put Cindy Lauper - Girls just want to have fun on repeat, turned my laptop volume up, locked my computer and walked away. The asshole finally picked up the headset.

I know this is about peoples personal preference for music, but I am surprised nobody has mentioned http://pandora.com/. I listen to it virtually everyday. You wanna listen to 70s rock or hip hop or indie or whatever it will get it for you and start guessing what you want to hear next. I've been using it over a year.

I had a co-worked I shared a cubicle with few years back. He was always using speaker phone even when he didn't have anything to say. He would be on a speaker call for a couple hours a day and I would just have to sit there and listen. I started grumbling about it and we had a few discussions but he didn't stop doing it. So one day I put Cindy Lauper - Girls just want to have fun on repeat, turned my laptop volume up, locked my computer and walked away. The asshole finally picked up the headset.

I know this is about peoples personal preference for music, but I am surprised nobody has mentioned pandora.com. I listen to it virtually everyday. You wanna listen to 70s rock or hip hop or indie or whatever it will get it for you and start guessing what you want to hear next. I've been using it over a year.

What?! No love for the greatest of the great, Dr. Demento? http://www.drdemento.com/

I have his 20th anniversary 2 disc set (and even that is pretty old) and that'll get you going for hours...

Fish heads, fish heads, roly poly fish heads...

That and I'm also in the trace/ambient camp. Soma's Drone Zone is oddly mind clearing at times for programming.

I usually code to a mix of Enya and Clannad. I've got over seven hours of it in iTunes, so it doesn't get repetitive and it's nice for background music. I agree with the others who say that listening to something really helps me focus. I think it occupies the part of my brain that would normally wander and distract me from the task at hand.

Pink Floyd for me.

> Clearly this book was written by a Country-Western fan ("What kind
> of music do you usually have here?" "Oh, we have both kinds.
> Country. AND Western.").

*ding* You win being first with the Blues Brothers quote. That's exactly what entered my mind when I read the later post that said "I listen to all varieties of metal when I code."

> Of course, this book was written in 1994 about events in the 90's... so the author really had no excuse.)

I suppose you could look at it that way. What I was trying to get at is that I think its still OK to call them "metal" today, as long as you are talking about that old work. Just because the genre' has evolved doesn't mean we have to go back and reclassify all the old practicioners as something else.

If he was talking about their work in the 90's, well, I'm impressed. I didn't think anyone bought that stuff. :-)

I started listening to this mixed tape and wow, something just snapped releasing some very suppressed memories. I thought I was ok all of these years, but clearly from my uncontrollable weeping while fetal position on the floor demonstrates otherwise!

"Billy, don't be a HERO, come back to meeeeeeeee". BWWWAAAAA!!!! :)

I suspect you guys might find the wikipedia entry for Journey a bit more accurate. They classified them as initially Jazz Fusion, then loosely compared them to Boston and Foreigner (roughly how I remember them), then Pop, then "Adult Contemporary". "Heavy Metal" is never used once.

*Amazing* amount of churn in that band too. I count 20 different members at one time or other. At some point you quit being a band and start being a corporation. :-)

Cleanup, Testing, Documentation, Scripts:
Bat Out of Hell/Meatloaf
Please Hammer Don't Hurt'Em/MC Hammer
Design, Algorithms, Intensive Coding:
Accelerated Learning
Anything else:
Active noise cancellation headsets.

One person's music, is another person's nightmare. I can't imagine someone not using a headset in a group environment. Private offices are great, but cubicles next to the sink and coffee pot, not so much.

*Familiar* music helps me concentrate. Something new is distracting, but if I'm running over well-worn tracks in my brain then that helps. Especially if the alternative is the low murmur of an office environment.

I've been tested as having a bi-lateral brain - neither side dominant - so I think the music helps the parts of my brain I'm not using when programming. Then those parts don't distract me from coding - they get to listen to music!

For me, coding is an act of violence. I feel like I'm ripping things apart and putting them back together in ways nature never intended. Tool, NIN, and the like are my favs. I don't need a shrink - I can always write code if I have some negative feelings to work out. :)

"Tie A Yellow Ribbon" is actually not that bad. I'm imagining myself walking down a road on a sunny day. That would be a nice and happy background music.

Clearly another case of "Stockholm syndrome"

At my previous position, we had music playing all day long. It alternated between country and america's top pop hits. I could deal with pop music, but it made for a tough day when country was on. One day they accidentally put it at the wrong station and Offspring came on, which I was pretty happy about. Half way through the song though, it got changed to country.

It's nice now where i'm at, no music at all. If I need to concentrage, I ussually have nothing going. Otherwise I have my headphones on with either assorted music (largely from the 80's and 90's, mostly rock) or sports talk radio (which I am addicted too).

http://www.hardradio.com

Heavy metal. Streaming. Free. Without commercials.

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.

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=en"Keygen music!</a> Try blasting that in the office. Not that I would know what keygens really sound like...

For me, programming music needs to be on the mellow side:
Sting
Peter Gabriel
Genesis
Pink Floyd
the Eagles
any score by John Williams
etc.

But I know some people who listen to hard rock (even death metal!) constantly while programming.

I agree with a previous comment.. that the only music I can listen to is music that I already know well, such as my Beatles collection. Otherwise I find myself too distracted.

Also, I'm not a techno fan but sometimes those beats are good for coding, anything without lyrics for me is good for programming.

I usually choose to listen to online radio because even thought I have tons of mp3s I find myself spending too much time hitting the "next song" shortcut key until I find a song I want listen to.

Great album. At least 2 or 3 of the songs are ones I've always loved.

I'm really sick.

(Okay, many actually suck more than death itself)

PS: My rule for coding music is anything at all that you are really, really used to. You really just want to make sure that it doesn't make you stop and think or anything.

Something strong and fast helps keep me especially awake and motivated (Used to LOVE coding to entire Devo albums--wore cassettes of three different DEVO albums OUT).

Also had one project that pissed us off so much that we made our theme song "Break Stuff" (Limp Bizkit)--we threw it on every morning to get us in the right mood.

Ha. I remember the early days of our department (two of us programmers tucked away in a corner of the main office); the admin girls who occupied the rest of the office (spending the day doing mind-numbing data-entry) insisted that they had to have Radio 1 on all day or they'd "go mad with boredom". Words cannot express how much I now hate Chris Moyles and asinine DJ chatter in general...

We used to get our own back by having shouting matches about the relative merits of database schemas; eventually we got our own office.

Aside from that, I find that Gregorian chant creates the right note of mysticism around the whole coding process :)

Usually I listen to Digitally Imported online radio, Vocal Trance section. I've listened to this station for something like 3-4 years so I know most songs they play. Some may consider this type of music really cheesy, but I love it when I program. The words don't bother me at all.

Surely there is no more sublime coding song than:

Clubbed To Death - Rob D

Pros:
- High tempo makes you work faster
- No lyrics to distract you
- Strong beat which you just have to time with each hard return

"Muskrat Love" may be the worst song ever constructed.

I always listen to ambient music (Brian Eno, Boards of Canada, etc.) when I'm doing any programming. It's perfect music because it's just enough not to distract from the task at hand.

BTW Jeff... since you are Shatner fan... get the 2004 'Has been'. His rendition of Common People is in fact awesome.

Regarding music to code by, although I am probably the same crusty age you and most of the readers, I will have to tell you that solid progressive trance is one of the best things to code to... and maybe a bit of Rammstein

I seem to recall recently reading about a study that found that Developers listening to music had higher rates of bugs in their code than those that did not. Unfortunately I cannot recall where I read that. I'll do some Googling and digging through my notes to see if I can find it. If true, its the type of thing one might expect to see as a "Coding Horror" in Steve McConnell's Code Complete.

I personally listen to classical music. If I listen to anything with words, or any Jazz which I love, I start concentrating on the music rather than my coding. Classical music blocks out the background noise, but does not distract me... unless its Modest Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain" or anything by Tchaikovsky.

I used to work at this consulting shop in Morristown, NJ and for some godforsaken reason the guy running it hooked together the phone hold music with the music playing on the speakers throughout the office. Not to mention this probably being a violation of the radio station's terms of service, but what was played on one and hence both was a little radio station located in the NY area on your dial as 95.5 WPLJaaay! The shittiest brand of pop music, repeated basically on the hour, over and over again. It was hell. I know the words to most Mariah Carey singles and I want to die. At the time, I was too poor/straight out of college to afford a good pair of noise canceling headphones, but who wants to work in a headphone dungeon 8 hours a day anyhow? Memories.

code to Bach; anything else is a waste of time

I'm partial to Schoenberg's piano concertos, myself. The atonality seems to help with the distraction -- most of my little mental micro-thought-trains that wander off from work get caught by the music, and dumped back off onto the work a moment or two later. Tonal music, even Bach, doesn't quite do that for me, and anything more than the piano is distracting.

> BTW Jeff... since you are Shatner fan... get the 2004 'Has been'. His rendition of Common People is in fact awesome.

Way ahead of you! Fantastic album, a colloaboration with Ben Folds:

http://www.amazon.com/Has-Been-William-Shatner/dp/B0002RUPH4

Jeff, you really need a transparent PNG version of the logo.

I have read that brain of a programmer works like an artist. Same zone on the brain works while programming or painting / sculpturing.

And this part is also activated while listening music.

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.

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.

My fovourite music is the silence after midnight, only noise of cooling fan, and ticks of keyboard.

For day time, I prefer Evanescence and other female fronted metal bands.

While resting, I like to listen Kitaro, however I can't focus on programming while listening Kitaro because I can't stop focusing on music.

>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=UTF8&s=books&qid=1218550186&sr=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! :D

... 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.

Trance through noise blocking earbuds. Let them listen to all of the Neil Diamond they want...I am in my own world.

John Coltrane is music - I don't what the rest of you are talking about.

I usually just have my whole collection on shuffle, although I tend to go on sprees of next-mashing when I can't be satisfied...

When I really want to concentrate, I prefer Joe Satriani (flowing guitar without lyrics).

Ambient stuff just makes my brain work harder trying to recognize patterns that aren't there, so it distracts me quite a bit...

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.

can't believe i went and listened to that mixtape... you said it was bad but i thought maybe it was good.. NOOOOO!! ARGH

How many times does it usually take to not bleed from the ears anymore?

Generally I agree with those folks who say its better to go soundless. However, that's not an option when you work in a huge cubicle farm.

I generally try to listen to NPR, as its a good way to at least keep informed. But when I switch to music, oddly I've found that its the most mellow stuff I have that seems to work best for me. Within that, the worst stuff seems to work better for me that the good stuff. If its music that truly rocks, I find myself wanting to stop and listen.

So my music to code by ends up being (whole albums, in order):
Arrested Development - 3 Years, 5 Months, and 2 Days in the Life.
Frankie Goes to Hollywood - Welcome to the Pleasure Dome
The Art of Noise - In Visible Silence
Miami Vice (Music from the Television Show)
(after that, I'm stuck with good mellow stuff)
Grateful Dead - Terrapin Station
Jethro Tull - Warchild
Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow (a bit short, sadly)

My tastes vary so I have a couple streaming music sites I keep on hand, as mentioned many times before, without vocals.

Classical -> KXPR Capital Radio - http://www.capradio.org/programs/classicalmusic/default.aspx

Trance/dance -> Trance Lab with Lord Bass - http://www.trancelab.com

Various (Rock, big band) -> Pandora = http://www.pandora.com (for example: http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh26717058879895890)

I used play yodeling music while coding. Oh, what fun :) or torture

Um, the best programming music is the Quake II Soundtrack (1997) mostly by Sonic Mayhem

Avalaaaaaaaaaaaaancha!!!

(Really inspires me)

i've listened to 2 track till now, what's wrong with it? :D
well, me my self prefer to bang my head with some hardcore heavy metal
salyer is a good choice always
any metal heads here? \m/

Too Funny... had a little lolocopter when I started the tape.

I did the same thing 18 years ago with Metallica. All of my co-workers listened to country full blast and I was getting sick of it. I bought AJFA from a pawn shop as a joke and blasted away.

About the third or fourth playthrough just about everyone had fallen in love with the CD. Wish Steve Vai and Rush had resonated as well.

Dang, I hate you! I'm actually getting ready to download most of these tunes.

grrrr.

I don't care what people say... without a constant stream through my Bose buds i wouldn't get jack done in our office. The music is only occasionally registering in the foreground. It's kinda like my 5-speed Legend, people tell me how happy I'd be if I got an automatic... but I'm not unhappy. I don't even realize I'm shifting.

There are some tracks that are voodoo to productivity though (unless it's time for a brain break)
Natalie Grant - Held
Yellow - Oh Yeah
War - Low Rider
Steve Vai - Deep down into the pain
.. and I'm guessing anything Shatner

Jeff, I happen to know for a fact that you have the largest collection of 70s pop tunes imaginable!

You don't know this, but 70s pop songs are the crux of my super hero powers. If I am humming a pop tune from the 70s, I can make incredibly poor decisions about how to abuse my body (caffeine, nicotine, etc.). It is not a top tier super power like invulnerability or flight, but you have to take what you can get.

ABBA FOREVER!

nothing like the beegees for beating that 3 o clock slump :)

I'm just testing the vebvisum http://www.webvisum.com/ captcha solver, and it appears your famous 'captcha' still is robot proof!!
;)
Using "Solve captcha on the page resulted in the captcha answer '109K readers' and using OCR on the image itself yielded no result.

Where's you gone? Haven't seen a new post in 5 days.

Everything OK?

I am surprised that no one yet mentioned the classic "Badger Badger Badger" song:
http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com/
There is no way that I can sleep while listing to it. To me the song in like mental caffeine -- a little bit goes a long way.

Ahhhhh! Having My Baby might be one of the most painful yet enjoyable songs of all time.

Wow - I've been coding to that mix tape all morning. "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" and "Torn Between Two Lovers" are great!

Personally, I like to code to the Backstreet Boys, A-Teens, and ABBA (no - really. Ask anyone who knows me ;-) with a splash of Puccini. In fact, my current playlist has *5* different versions of Dancing Queen! Woot!

You iPod folks. I'm still not there...

Since I'm virtually always connected I just installed the Shoutcast DSP on a machine and stream it from a shoutcast service. I could see the same thing working for a team... collaborative playlist.

And Having My Baby is truly a bringer of smiles.

"Allow me to explain by citing my 2007 YouTube review of a particular single."
Fixed; the quote applies to me and countless others for http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU

The best coding music?

"On Land," the seminal Ambient Music album by Brian Eno, circa 1973.

There...now that I've told you, I have to code, I mean kill, you.

Hey nobody mentioned AC/DC and Deep Purple.
These two together with

Bryan Adams, Placebo, Pink Floyd, CCR, Eagles, David Bowie, Van Halen, Nick Cave

make up my main dish. All this spiced with some classic music such as Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and Vivaldi.

Was all this really necessary?

:)

Get to work, you lazy sods.

We used to listen to "Kompressor" while working ... it's a heavy german-accent industrial sound krush-fear combo ... not everyone liked it, mind you. :)

Yes, and it also started as a joke and after a while i really began to like this music - i listened to it A LOT!

Video:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQis9xkYkg0">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQis9xkYkg0</a>;

Music Download:
<a href="http://www.dizzler.com/music/Kompressor/K_Mighty_Remix">http://www.dizzler.com/music/Kompressor/K_Mighty_Remix</a>;

Working links (hopefully):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQis9xkYkg0

www.dizzler.com/music/Kompressor/K_Mighty_Remix

late I know, but when I worked in a Warehouse we called it the "Radio 1 effect".

I used to torture my ex-teammates with all the discography of Insane Clown Posse for about 6 months. I used to play it in the exact same order until the point everybody knew which song followed each one. They always show me how much they hated it, they even used to throw anything they could put their hands on (CD cases, pens, balls of paper, even an old keyboard). As the time went by it became like a ritual we followed religiously. After the 6 months passed I was reassigned to manage a different project and I was relocated two stories away from there.

About 3 months latter I went to visit my former team. For my surprise they were still playing the exact same play list I used to play with the difference that this time they played in ever single computer and you could see a giant poster of Violent J (lead singer) sticked on to the central window. It was like a cult... very creepy. They now used to throw things to each other randomly.

Tapes are obsolete already, hehe

It's kinda helpful. not bad at all.

I think richard cheese is excellent to code by. his lounge classics are rockin

Two words: EAR PLUGS!!!!!

I find music a distraction for me when coding. Why? Because I start listening to the music instead of focusing on the code. But if I were to code to music it would be to my own.

I'm new to PHP and recently setup my local machine with PHP and MySQL for doing development. I was sort of stuck when I needed to post my work for the user to test and review. After looking around a bit I found a site that hosts PHP and MySQL apps. I was surprised that it was free - it seems they're offering the service at no cost until 2012. At that point they'll change over to a fee-based service. However, in the meantime, it's a great place to do anything from demo and sandbox right up to posting sites for real.

Their pitch is as follows:

"This is absolutely free, there is no catch. You get 350 MB of disk space and 100 GB bandwidth. They also have cPanel control panel which is amazing and easy to use website builder. Moreover, there is not any kind of advertising on your pages."

Check it out using this link:

http://www.000webhost.com/83188.html

Important: There's one catch in that you must make sure you visit the account every 14 days - otherwise the account is marked 'Inactive' and the files are deleted!!!

Thanks and good luck!