Sometimes, music with lyrics in the language I'm learning. I don't understand most of it, but my ear gets better at picking out words, and properly-conjugated phrases start to sound natural to me, even if I don't know what they mean yet.<p>But that's only when I feel I need to be pulled along. Once I get into flow, I don't see or hear anything except what I'm doing. My music will end and I won't notice until 2 hours later when I come up for air.<p>In "Peopleware", DeMarco and Lister are even more explicit: if programmers need to put on headphones to drown out ambient noise, they're using up the very creativity they're being paid so much for.
Dup. See <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=61831" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=61831</a> and <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99936" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99936</a>
Maybe someone should create a Hacker News (or hacking music) group on last.fm?<p>My hacking music preferences:<p><a href="http://www.last.fm/user/zenlinux/" rel="nofollow">http://www.last.fm/user/zenlinux/</a>
Boards of Canada, Thievery Corporation, Morcheeba, Zero 7, Massive Attack, Daft Punk, Kid 606, Royksopp<p>zenlinux's idea of a last.fm group for this is an excellent idea.
I tend to listen to something from the death metal genre
<a href="http://www.newmetalarmy.com/band/unleashed" rel="nofollow">http://www.newmetalarmy.com/band/unleashed</a><p>or maybe in the thrash genre<p><a href="http://www.newmetalarmy.com/band/evile" rel="nofollow">http://www.newmetalarmy.com/band/evile</a>
Space rock (God is an Astronaut)
<a href="http://www.last.fm/music/God+Is+an+Astronaut" rel="nofollow">http://www.last.fm/music/God+Is+an+Astronaut</a><p>and another in the same sort of genre 'Gold Four'
<a href="http://www.last.fm/music/Au4" rel="nofollow">http://www.last.fm/music/Au4</a>
I think this has been discussed a couple of times here:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=61831" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=61831</a><p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99936" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99936</a>
Philip Glass is my favorite to listen to while coding. It's prefect for both background music while focusing on a difficult problem and for putting into the foreground when you just need to take a second away from the problem.
All kinds, the only time I avoid music and keep silence is when I have to do reading/writing stuff. Probably the same reason I find reading and writing to be more of a chore and coding/designing more enjoyable.
I listen to a lot of Pandora... but recently, I realized that iTunes has radio stations built in. A really good trance station is Electronic -> ABF Underground.
Devo, Gary Numan, Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, Muddy Waters, Derrick May, Juan Atkins, Drexciya, Dan Curtin.
It varies, though it tends to be noisy repetitive semi-drone electronic-ish stuff.<p>Lately I'm liking Holy Fuck.<p>(Though I dug up some Hawkwind, too, for some odd reason.)
Wow, we all have pretty similar tastes. I always listen to something that has a steady beat and fight for my attention, so anything too lyric heavy is out the window.<p>Proton: www.protonradio.com
Frisky: <a href="http://www.cbs.nu/home/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cbs.nu/home/</a>
CBS: www.cbs.nu/home/
Radiomagnetic: www.radiomagnetic.com
Mostly instrumental music, primarily some type of jazz or classical.<p>If I am in a noisy working environment, then I keep the music going pretty much constantly, to block out extraneous noise. In general, the more quiet and peaceful my environment is, the less music I listen to while working.
Gothic radio on the net. R1Live, darkwave or www.gothicradio.tv.<p>All that screaming behaves almost like white noise for me :-P<p>I once downloaded a recording of heavy rain from a nature site. I found that sound very very conducive to coding :)
Mostly dubstep recently, since you can just sink into it and get into a nice groove: <a href="http://dubstep.fm" rel="nofollow">http://dubstep.fm</a><p>IDM or drum n bass for occasions where hardcore coding is needed.
Pandora's (<a href="http://www.pandora.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.pandora.com</a>) is pretty cool to run in the background. I've discovered lots of new music through the site..