Coding music

Aug 02 2006

Recently I’ve been working on a large-scale modernisation project, reworking old table-layouts and inline styles into nice, clean modern CSS and XHTML.

For this sort of head-down coding work I’ll stick the headphones on and fire up iTunes – I find that anything fast works for me when I’m coding, so lately I’ve been listening to a lot of thrash metal and drum’n’bass, with a bit of hard house thrown in from time to time.

Last.fm is a great help in this respect, especially with their new and much improved downloadable player – just pick a genre or artist and it creates an instant radio station playing non-stop similar music. Check out my last.fm dashboard to see what I’m listening to at the moment.

What do you like to listen to when you’re churning out code?

Filed under: Music.

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Comments

Tim Huegdon
701 days ago
I tend to go for something fast too – although I tend to avoid vocals since I tend to pause and listen to the words.

Trance, Hard Trance, Hard House and Drum’n’Bass generally do the trick.

Having said that, I often opt for classical, jazz or guitar blues.
#1
Matthew Pennell
701 days ago
I tried classical but I found it demanded too much attention…
#2
Jonathan Snook
701 days ago
Lots of drum&bass for me, normally. I don’t mind minimal vocals. If I’m doing something a little more creative, I like to mix it up with pop/rock/punk/etc. I try for more upbeat stuff.
#3
Matthew Anderson
701 days ago
Same as Snook here. I tend to stick with Electronic/Dance. If I get stuck though, I’ll turn on my ‘favorites’ playlist which basically runs the gamut.
#4
web
696 days ago
Same here, Lots of Tiesto, Ministry of Sound and Armin Van Buuren
#5
Ilya
695 days ago
I can listen to anything, as long as I know it well. New music—music that I haven’t heard before—tends to distract me.
#6
doyjay
695 days ago
My coding music varies greatly. If I’m concentrating on getting something built and out of the way, it tends to be fast-paced stuff over headphones… Dream Theater, other mod-prog, dancey stuff… Experiments or code-for-fun is whatever is on I guess.

Designing music tends to be more relaxed, although that isn’t really reflected by my latest blog design. And, yes, occasionally the Ozrics features in there.
#7
dotjay
695 days ago
Hmmm, I am now “doyjay”, obviously. Damn these coding hands – I need to change to some slower music so I don’t type so fast!
#8