Ask HN: What music instrument do you play?

I read somewhere that most of the great hackers play some kind of music instrument. What instrument do you play?

It would be interesting to question, that what is about music and ability to play some instrument that goes so well along side programming and hacking.

I started piano lessons in elementary school just before I started copying QBasic out of library books. I also took lessons on guitar, trumpet, and turntables (scratching), and ended up getting a Bachelor of Music in jazz trumpet performance.

Then I decided I really wanted to make video games, so I got a master's degree in CS and now I'm moving to Seattle to make video games. I'm pretty much only playing guitar now, which is a much easier to play casually than the trumpet.

Programming and music (especially jazz improvisation) seem to involve very similar kinds of problem solving. Both of them require thinking about a problem at many different layers of abstraction simultaneously, and both are fundamentally about recognizing and manipulating abstract patterns. Also, both require a pretty focusued mindset--I learned that hours and hours in the practice room can pay off musically, and now I'm spending hours and hours at the computer in order to make games. Both are passions that, from the outside, might seem like they require a lot more work than they give back in payoff. But if you enjoy the process, it doesn't feel like work at all.

I'd say I'm pretty proficient in bass, dabble in acoustic guitar (Wonderwall?), and then hobby at electronic production.

Electronic music production is alot like web design/development in that you start with a completely blank canvas, and then you tweak and change tiny paramaters over and over again until you get a product you're satisfied with. Overall I think the major personality trait that lends itself to both web development and music production is being comfortable with long periods of isolation/introversion, blocking out the world to see what your mind is really capable of. An interesting look into this is ReGeneration (on hulu) where you really see Pretty Lights buckle down and do some work on a track with only a laptop and a pair of headphones. He's alone, in a corner, really tapping into his inner self, which is what I think alot of hackers really are doing when you get down to the root of it.

Well said. I spent 10 years as a full time pro playing upright bass, mostly jazz. Now, I code for a living. Holding and manipulating musical/data abstractions in your head is indeed a strong commonality.