Ask HN: What music helps you code better?

Techno? House? Classical Piano? Pop? No music? What helps you code better?

For me, the only genre that reliably works is "minimal" music, like stuff by Steve Reich[1] or Gas[2]. My definition of this genre would be music with no lyrics that has highly repetitive structures (differentiating it from "ambient" music, which I find too sleepy to be invigorating).

[1]: Music for 18 Musicians https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXJWO2FQ16c

[2]: Koenigsforst https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehNGoyMf9kU

Swedish death metal

I listen to old french house classics. It's an odd choice and occasionally the lyrics or samples distract me, but I figure the potential for distraction is always there and I'd rather be yanked from concentration into my most pleasant memories.

I also like some trance music or instrumental movie scores if they're chill enough.

But it kinda depends on what kind of code im writing. If I'm knee deep in the guts of some poor program with disassembly and an exploit and pointers floating in my head, I have a pair of those bose noise canceling that I can wear for complete silence.

I don't think music is necessarily a good frame for productive coding. At least not on its own. When I sit down with an intention, I'm just hearing ambient office noise until something a bit more interesting catches my attention, I kinda feel that urge to put my seatbelt on, Spotify is just a reflex, and I'll get to debugging or whatever I'm doing.

I know some guys who have like playlists or whatever queued up for work, but that's not really how I work. Hell, I know another guy in my department who wears noise canceling headphones all day every day. That's just how he likes it.

I did an entire project listening to the Steely Dan box set in constant repeat. Something about the precision and clarity of the studio work does it for me. I’ll still fire it up when I need to slam something out.