Lying is useless: I’m addicted… to music. Just about whatever I do, I will have music in the background. Especially when I’m working on the computer: programming, photo-shopping, video-editing, gaming all require music.
Different activities and varying times of day require different types of music for me. Luckily, I enjoy just about all kinds of music. The growing popularity of Spotify has driven both di.fm and last.fm radio from my favorites, and allows me to pick just about anything I want to hear.
This brings us back to the topic of this post then (hope no-one was expecting a guide on how to program music on some device), music for programming duties! I realized I put on certain types of music whenever I’m in a certain type of zone. So here’s a go at my music choice per programming task.
| Task | Music Genre |
|---|---|
| Creating C# interfaces, designing server side code | Dubstep or Classical Music |
| C# code (or any server side code, for that matter) | Any album that’s very familiar, e.g. Homework |
| Database design & SQL queries (SELECTs) | Electro, Hardstyle, or even some old Gabber tunes |
| SQL UPDATEs and DELETEs | Ambient or downbeat |
| CSS and HTML (skinning and the like) | 90s dance or dirty house |
| Debugging a difficult problem | Classical music or Gregorian chants |
| Creating wireframes | More dubstep |
| Excel formulas and VBA macros | Death Metal or Industrial Powernoise |
| Footnote: recently ghettofunk has been a great fallback for any programming task. Stickybuds! | |
Hopefully I’ll be able to look back at this post some time in the future and create an updated overview. Perhaps this will even inspire someone to up a music-programming cross table of their own. If you do: let me know!