Usually, when I work I need absolute silence. Especially when I write code. Any sound disturbs me. Those which have to do with human voices (phone calls, talks, music) are the most harmful. I never turn the music on or anything else when I program. I also prefer to leave all my development tasks for my night shifts.
But toda I found out that I can actually listen to music while writing code. I was looking for some new radio stations at Shoutcast to add to my music player and stumbled across some Jazz stations. I decided to try one before adding it to the list. I wasn’t yet programming, so it was OK to liste to it for some time.
It was only in the morning, 8 hours later that I noticed that I’ve programmed and did everything I had to do and never switched off the Jazz music. It didn’t disturb me even one bit. In fact I have a suspecion that it actually helped me. I will be repeating the experiment, but until than I’m surprised anyway…