Friday 9 September 2016

Music While You Code - Really?

I just finished listening to Episode 44 of the Coding Blocks podcast (a true epic - well done guys) and - wait a minute: did you really say "we listen to music as we write code"? (16 minutes in)  Really?  How do you do that? 

I find that any amount of music around me pretty soon diverts all my attention and all power of concentration.  If music is going in my ears at all then I do not have the option to not listen!  How would I listen to music while I am writing code?  Those are the exact same neurons that I use for both tasks!

In fact I have a theory that if you make a habit of trying to concentrate on any mental work while there is also music playing, then little by little you are training your nervous system to treat the sound of music as noise that has to be filtered out of your input system.

In time surely this must erode your ability to respond to music fully when you are able to give it your full attention.  If you take music seriously then surely you don't want that to happen?