Ask HN: Do you listen to music while coding? What genre makes you more creative?

I have to agree a lot with @yolesaber. Instrumental hip-hop, jazz, or afrobeat is are the best coding music for me, each for different reasons, and I have tons of each in either on vinyl, in my iTunes or on my Spotify, the latter two I stream out for everyone to enjoy if they want.

For the first, each minute-long vignette alludes to a certain mood, shifting and evolving with each progressive song to create a tapestry as the songs begin to melt together, and it helps me visualize the coding I write. I recommend: J Dilla, Madlib, Knxwledge, Ohbliv and the various radio stations they'd spin off.

Jazz is my classical music, with each song being a movement of a grander sort and becomes a soundtrack in my mind, and I have enough vinyl around me in my working space that I take my large Pomodoro breaks to just meditate and play a jazz record of my choice. I recommend the hard bop or bebop stuff, but free jazz from Strata-East Records is amazing for achieving this space

Afrobeat interestingly enough is fast, rhythmic, and has a beautiful flow to it to move your thoughts in your mind to. It is almost the quintessential daytime music, and brings liveliness to everything around you. Also fairly simple to fall in its trance, and it is great meditative music as well. I recommend (first and foremost) Fela Kuti and several Soundways compilations.

My new favorite Spotify playlist that I have curated has all of this plus spurts of soul and electronic music in it as well, and I prefer this because I have hours of uninterrupted music. It's called "Countercultural Coogi Couture" and I offer you all to take a listen and subscribe to it, I tend to throw in new gems every so often. http://spoti.fi/Tgtkzb

80s pop, all the way.

Awesome little site you built! I too like to work to mashup mixes - kapslap being a fave. It's that continuous flow, like you said.

Shpongle was my go-to coding music for a number of years. More recently I've been listening to a lot of trance. Above & Beyond's Group Therapy podcast is excellent.

I am a pretty big fan of http://musicforprogramming.net/.