What the developers are listening to: from classics to game soundtracks - we discuss the most interesting

    Writing code is a complex and creative task requiring a high level of concentration. And according to a number of studies , music can help tune in to a productive day.

    The only question is which musical genre to choose.

    At sites such as Reddit, Hacker News and Habr, more than one thread is devoted to discussing this issue. We decided to analyze the views of the developers and select the most interesting ones.


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    Classical music


    Listening to classic melodies while working leads to improved spatial thinking . This conclusion was reached in the process of studying the phenomenon known as the “Mozart effect” ( link to the original scientific article ). In the subsequent work of the scientific community on the topic, this hypothesis was criticized and refuted in a number of studies.

    Of course, business is not limited to Mozart. For example, one of the residents of Hacker News said that at work he was accustomed to listening to Bach's Brandenburg concerts: “I listen to Bach while I work and never get tired of it”. And someone helps to cope with the task of listening to Schnittke. One of users Habr noted, that to him Schnittke “perfectly cleans the brain”.

    However, listening to the classics while working is not suitable for everyone - it may seem too emotional to someone, and therefore, on the contrary, it will distract. In this case, Reddit is advised to take a closer look at the “ classic crossover ” musical style . It is a kind of synthesis of classic with pop, rock or electronic music. “Such tracks will sound familiar, but will not distract,” writes one of the users of Reddit. Among the performers of this genre are: pianist Maxence Kirin , guitarist David Rogers , violinist David Garrett .

    Electonic music


    One of the styles of this trend is ambient, which is characterized by enveloping, unobtrusive sound. According to research , this type of music allows you to focus on the task and improves the emotional state. A popular kind of ambient are the “sounds of nature.” For example, on the site of the project Rainymood you can listen to the sound of rain. The developers additionally post a recording with electronic or classical music that can be listened to in parallel with the sounds of nature (at the time of this writing, the composition of the artist sounds like Explore In The Sky - Your Hand In Mine ). Among other projects in this area, people celebrate Noisli.. The soundtrack here is the most diverse - the sound of the wheels of the train, the crackling of the fire, the noise of the summer night and many others.

    In addition to ambient, users of the sites often mentioned trance. In particular, it is known that the melody of this style is listened to by the team of developers of the mobile application Snapchat. One of its advantages, they call rhythm, which "on a subconscious level creates a feeling of moving forward." Pinterest team developer Dmitry Kislyuk believes that trance helps him in his analytical work. He also shared his playlists on Spotify, which he uses during coding sessions: Dreamy Trance and Energy Trance . Many users of Hacker News agree with him. One of them noted that to increase concentration he listensprogressive trance - according to him, he calms down and does not distract from work. Here are a couple of radio stations where they play trance music: DI.FM and Record .

    Rock and Jazz


    A study of London’s Imperial College and King’s College of Music found that listening to rock music can prevent men from concentrating on the task and lead to more mistakes. And what is interesting, listening to rock music had no effect on women's productivity.

    However, there is another point of view. In particular, scientists from the Academy of Sciences of Iowa conducted an experiment , during which 22 participants were asked to solve 6 tests while listening to different genres of music. Estimated accuracy and speed of solving problems. After analyzing the collected data, it was fixed that listening to rock or jazz helped the subjects to achieve higher test results (in 89% of cases), compared to other genres.

    But despite the disagreements and contradictory results of different researchers, these musical directions are often mentioned by the developers. Mainly because listening to rock helps to diversify the monotonous work. For example, one of Habrazhiteli includes heavy or fast rock / metal during “nightmarishly boring development stages”, such as debugging. Groups and performers that are recommended to listen to: Chon , Periphery , Animals as Leaders , Intervals , etc.


    Photo by Ginny CC

    As for jazz, one of the users writes to Hacker News: “My brain turns on when I listen to complex music - with dissonant, rhythmically strange constructions. So my playlist for “focusing” is post-bop jazz . ”

    Among the popular jazz performers in threads are recommended: Chick Corea , a group of Steps Ahead , pianist Keith Jarrett , and also saxophonist John Coltrane .

    Soundtracks and game music


    “Usually songs with words, on the contrary, are distracting, because I start to sing along and think about the meaning of the text. Therefore, I believe that such music is not suitable for coding sessions, ” says Snapchat developer David Tian.

    According to research , music with words helps during intense exercises - running or training in the gym. But when performing complex cognitive tasks, they can, on the contrary, dispel attention. For this reason, many developers while listening to soundtracks for movies and games. On the one hand, such compositions can be unobtrusive and play as a background, on the other - they are rhythmic and able to create an atmosphere that helps to concentrate.

    One of the residents Habr notedthat the following compositions help him while working: Zerg 1 , Departure (from DN3D), GLA 1 (from CC Generals), Gallente 004 . You can listen and download this type of music on the sites: OverClocked ReMix , VGMUSIC . On Reddit, a separate thread was created for this .

    Selection of resources


    In addition to individual music trends and performers, users of Habr, HN, Reddit and Quora recommended paying attention to audio projects that play background music for work (something like Rainymood , which we talked about earlier). Based on the recommendations, we have compiled a small list:

    • Music for Programming - project developers state that the most effective way to concentrate is music without words and drum sounds, consisting of random noises. Stylish IDE style resource with lots of playlists.
    • Music to Code - the music work of software developer Carl Franklin (Carl Franklin) from appvnext. According to Franklin, his original samples can immerse the listener into a stream. He offers 13 tracks with a duration of 25 minutes, which should work fine with the “Tomato” method , according to which tasks are divided into 25-minute segments (however, to get these tracks, you have to pay $ 39);
    • Coffitivity - created by developers from Richmond for those who work well against the background of monotonous unintelligible noise - will help to recreate and immerse yourself in the atmosphere of a Brazilian bistro or cafe on a university campus.
    • Listen to the cloud is a project by Norwegian developers that allows you to listen to air traffic controllers talks to ambient music.
    • Focusmusic.fm - bits for work, flow status and increased productivity;
    • freeCodeCamp Radio is a music channel on YouTube, with music for programming.



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