Programming is tough. Sometimes I need background music to keep things lively. But choosing songs is tricky. Anything with lyrics is distracting. Melo

Music to listen to while programming - part 1

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2022-08-13 18:30:03

Programming is tough. Sometimes I need background music to keep things lively. But choosing songs is tricky. Anything with lyrics is distracting. Melodies that are new to me are jarring. Songs I've heard a thousand times only emphasize the dullness of a thick page of code. Sometimes silence is really the only solution, and I'm sure many programmers out there swear by it. But for me, if carefully selected, a little music goes a long way. Here are five of my favorites, matched to the coding dish with which they go best.

Philip Glass - Koyaanisqatsi Soundtrack This is the soundtrack for a strange movie about the beauty of the modern cityscape and all the marvels of 20th century industry, like the New York City subway, nuclear power plants, space rockets, and explosions. Koyaanisqatsi means life out of balance, and the movie shows how, with industrious spirit and scientific discipline, humans are coming ever closer to bringing life back into balance, finally taming the barbarism of overgrown nature. Computers are the end game in our long struggle. And it's we, the programmers, who shall lead the people from desert and jungle, to salvation in the new reality, civilized and virtual.

The Koyaanisqatsi soundtrack is hymn to the technological revolution. It's both ode to our forebears in industry and hint of the transcendent abstraction to come. It stirs us at the event horizon of our humanity, that pivot point between this reality and the next. Save this music only for the grandest of programming problems.

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