Autism and Programmers
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Autism and Programmers
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Re: Autism and Programmers
#2Lou has to have the right music in his head to spot his patterns and I, like many developers, have experience of getting into the zone with the help of familiar ambient music. It’s as if the regularity of the music, it’s lack of surprising contrast, drowns out the rhythmless noise of our environment. The alternative is to completely remove all noise...
Any suggestions on this kind of ambient music? Thanks!
EDIT: I'm looking for specific suggestions of which artists/collections/radio channels worked best for you. Thanks to all who replied!
Re: Autism and Programmers
#3Lou has to have the right music in his head to spot his patterns and I, like many developers, have experience of getting into the zone with the help of familiar ambient music. It’s as if the regularity of the music, it’s lack of surprising contrast, drowns out the rhythmless noise of our environment. The alternative is to completely remove all noise... Any suggestions on this kind of ambient music? Thanks! EDIT: I'm…
On iTunes you can go to Radio -> Ambient and there are a bunch of stations that play the style of music. I'm a fan of StillStream and Drone Zone.
Re: Autism and Programmers
#4Lou has to have the right music in his head to spot his patterns and I, like many developers, have experience of getting into the zone with the help of familiar ambient music. It’s as if the regularity of the music, it’s lack of surprising contrast, drowns out the rhythmless noise of our environment. The alternative is to completely remove all noise... Any suggestions on this kind of ambient music? Thanks! EDIT: I'm…
On iTunes you can go to Radio -> Ambient and there are a bunch of stations that play the style of music. I'm a fan of StillStream and Drone Zone.
Pandora also has a good selection of electronica and ambient music, and can store and learn what you like in a custom "station".
Re: Autism and Programmers
#5But what happens if you create a concentration of left brain thinkers? Imagine if an industry sprang up that relied on such people, resulting in a dense population of super-geeks. So dense that they started breeding little geeks. If autism is genetic, as it we are starting to believe it is, would this not cause an increase in the cases of people being born with traits from the autistic spectrum?
This theory was proposed in a paper by Simon Baron-Cohen (ref: http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news/Systemizers-Have-A...). His study showed that children of "high-systemizers" were more likely to be autistic. If this is true, it would explain quite a bit. The rise in autism rates seems to match the growth of the tech industry and the value of "knowledge workers."
Re: Autism and Programmers
#6Lou has to have the right music in his head to spot his patterns and I, like many developers, have experience of getting into the zone with the help of familiar ambient music. It’s as if the regularity of the music, it’s lack of surprising contrast, drowns out the rhythmless noise of our environment. The alternative is to completely remove all noise... Any suggestions on this kind of ambient music? Thanks! EDIT: I'm…
Sometimes I'll play trance ambient just loud enough to smooth over the environmental noise while coding: http://www.hbr1.com/perl/apax.cgi?run=jorbis&station=
Re: Autism and Programmers
#7Lou has to have the right music in his head to spot his patterns and I, like many developers, have experience of getting into the zone with the help of familiar ambient music. It’s as if the regularity of the music, it’s lack of surprising contrast, drowns out the rhythmless noise of our environment. The alternative is to completely remove all noise... Any suggestions on this kind of ambient music? Thanks! EDIT: I'm…
djbolivia.ca - he even has a few mixes expressly made for programmers.
Re: Autism and Programmers
#8But what happens if you create a concentration of left brain thinkers? Imagine if an industry sprang up that relied on such people, resulting in a dense population of super-geeks. So dense that they started breeding little geeks. If autism is genetic, as it we are starting to believe it is, would this not cause an increase in the cases of people being born with traits from the autistic spectrum? This theory was propo…
Autism is more complex than that. See for example http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=vitamin-d-a.... One of the big mysteries is that Somali immigrants to the US and Sweden have a much higher rate of autism than their native counterparts. Other factors implicated include increasing parents age at time of birth(mother's and father's), more frequent ultrasounds, more chemical environment, etc. Once you start to think through each factor, the N^2 effect of geeks marrying other geeks is unlikely to explain the 5-10X increase in autism over the last 20 years.
Re: Autism and Programmers
#9Lou has to have the right music in his head to spot his patterns and I, like many developers, have experience of getting into the zone with the help of familiar ambient music. It’s as if the regularity of the music, it’s lack of surprising contrast, drowns out the rhythmless noise of our environment. The alternative is to completely remove all noise... Any suggestions on this kind of ambient music? Thanks! EDIT: I'm…
Brian Eno has an extra feature to his ambient music. Occasionally there will be a little note out of place, a tiny surprise. He says this is to keep you from falling asleep, or rouse you out of a daydream you may have fallen into. If you're really concentrating, this little "bump" in the music probably won't even register.
This is featured in "Music for Airports" (good for busy places), and "Discreet Music" (takes some getting used to, but fades solidly into subconsciousness after a few minutes).
Re: Autism and Programmers
#10Lou has to have the right music in his head to spot his patterns and I, like many developers, have experience of getting into the zone with the help of familiar ambient music. It’s as if the regularity of the music, it’s lack of surprising contrast, drowns out the rhythmless noise of our environment. The alternative is to completely remove all noise... Any suggestions on this kind of ambient music? Thanks! EDIT: I'm…
Sometimes I'll play trance ambient just loud enough to smooth over the environmental noise while coding: http://www.hbr1.com/perl/apax.cgi?run=jorbis&station=
Same for me. Trance is a good coding music. I get mine from http://www.trance.fm