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

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

#1

Post by uzzi »

I have tried listening to different genres of music while coding, from heavy rock to pop music with different results on terms of how do I feel creatively. Lately I have stuck to classic rock, I feel the classics don't get on my way, I just code without feeling distracted. Night Ranger, Journey, Triumph among my favorite coding music. So I'm curious to know what kind of music do you like to listen while programming if any at all?

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

#3

Post by jkupferman »

I generally enjoy longer, continuous pieces of music so that my mood can flow with the music and I don't have to spend time tinkering with playlists.

I started by listening to prog-rock (Pink Floyd, King Crimson), then moved onto sample-based stuff like Dj Shadow and RJD2. Now I mostly listen to EDM/Mashup dj mixes from soundcloud which are great. I've been enjoying them so much I built a small site for finding the best mixes (http://mixtrss.com/).

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

#4

Post by uzzi »

bilawal wrote: post #2

I listen to a lot of Bon Iver, The Weeknd, Rihanna, Charlie Simpson, Florence + The Machine and Ben Howard. So, soft and emotional music. Hard rock and pop music distracts me into the song. I'm increasingly moving over to instrumentals.

Hard rock does distracts me too. I'll add some Florence + The Machine to my playlist to add some variation to the classics and see how it goes for me. Thanks

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

#8

Post by yolesaber »

Jazz, especially hard bop, makes for great coding music. When played well, it fades into the background and become a soundtrack of sorts yet it is still technically interesting enough that when I need to take a break from coding, I can focus on the jazz and it'll still keep my brain going.

Chillwave is also amazing. I've been doing a lot of coding to this lately: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa3qqfgp1Ns The hypnotic style of it helps me focus and get into the 'zone' more often than not.

I tend to find sung lyrics distracting in music, although chants and foreign languages aren't as much of a hindrance.

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