Music for Programming
Does anyone know of any actual conclusive studies in this area? Like most here, I have my own rules and preferences. The main rule seems to be it must be familiar, in fact it's best if I've heard it a thousand times already. But there are only three kinds of music that work for me:-<p>1. Music I first got into during my teenage years when I was sitting up all night coding assembler (OK, I admit it, Pink Floyd) works well because I think my mind is conditioned in an almost Pavlovian way to go into programming mode when I hear it;<p>2. Ambient EDM works well because it is very repetitive and doesn't have any strong lyrical structure - my trouble is, as an old fart, I find only a very small subset of the vast range of EDM that I actually like.<p>3. A certain kind of loud, wall-of-sound rock music which is very heavy on distortion with subdued vocals works well <i>but only at night</i>.<p>Received opinion says classical music is good for cognitive tasks, and I've tried over the years but never good great results.