And the beer I drink also improves my coding skills, and the coffee and the nicotine.
Stop trying to pass your costly and possibly damaging addiction as something that improves your life and brings you value.
I guess I'm asking to get heavily down-voted but I'm not all that into music. I know some coders that can't work without radio but radio is a torture for me when I try to concentrate. I even read about one guy that thinks that he codes best when he has TV on (spidweb guy, you have to give it to him that he makes amazing stuff all by himself, but I personally think he would have no problem concentrating with pack of buffaloes running over his body). I tried once coding with TV on and I lasted a minute before It drove me nuts. I can bear songs if they are in language I don't understand.
I know that some people have better or worse resistance for distractions but I can't believe that some people concentrate better with distractions than without them.
You are generalizing from one example -- because this is how you are, this is how everyone else must be. This is fallacious, for obvious reasons.
> I know that some people have better or worse resistance for distractions but I can't believe that some people concentrate better with distractions than without them.
Why can't you believe that? I personally find myself completely incapable of concentrating in silence. You think the music, or tv, or whatever is a distraction, yet for me it's sorely needed to drown out my own diverging thoughts. I need the constant distraction, or I will very soon find myself thinking about or designing something completely different from what I was supposed to be doing.
What kind of environment you need to be able to work is, however, is not really that important. Much more important is learning not to generalize from yourself. I am utterly dumbfounded that this is not taught in schools at an early age -- I find understanding that you are not me to be one of the crucial life lessons needed to turn people into decent human beings.
I agree that generalization from one instance is wrong. But you can't assume that every case is different because if you did that then science could not exists. If you would assume that each subsequent item would fall different way there would be no point in searching any universal law of falling.
You construct theory about something with the data you have, and try to gather more data and see how it fits. Especially you look for the data that doesn't fit.
As I live my life I gather data and construct theories. I shared with you with one of my theories that seems to check up so far.
Namely: Music helps you the same way that glass of whiskey helps some doctor, cop or worker of printing press to deal with dull and stressful job.
In my opinion it creates an illusion that it's beneficial for you, same way as you feel better after drinking coffee or alcohol.
You get accustomed to music, listening to it makes your brain addicted to such stimuli and when you abstain from it you have trouble concentrating. That's why you have such trouble concentrating without music.Music gives you value. It only satisfies your addiction. You can argue same way that nicotine gives you value.
I have observational evidence of people who like the strictest of silence to work. They are unable to concentrate with even the slightest amount of noise in their environment - they are, applying your theory, addicted to silence.
The other problem is that addiction is a difficult study; you can't sync your theory with nicotine or alcohol because those sorts of addictions are metabolic - in that there is an actual physical/chemical addiction.
And, finally, if you are right and music can be addictive - what's the problem? It's entirely non-harmful, no side affects and helps you concentrate. It sounds like the ultimate drug :)
> I agree that generalization from one instance is wrong. But you can't assume that every case is different because if you did that then science could not exists. If you would assume that each subsequent item would fall different way there would be no point in searching any universal law of falling.
Yes. But plural of anecdote is not data. How you use music is simply not good enough to base such a huge "theory" on.
> Namely: Music helps you the same way that glass of whiskey helps some doctor, cop or worker of printing press to deal with dull and stressful job. In my opinion it creates an illusion that it's beneficial for you, same way as you feel better after drinking coffee or alcohol.
This would assume that I need the constant distraction because my job is particularly dull or stressful, and I need the pleasure derived from music to be able to bear it. But how does it compute into your theory that 1) I don't need it to be music, or in any way pleasurable. Anything that contains more parseable data than the A/C hum is good enough -- when I still worked in an office, the constant background "chatter" was good enough to keep me sane. 2) This does not apply to me just at work, but on anything and everything I do. To take a very extreme example, I am not able to derive pleasure from sex without something keeping me distracted enough to stay in my mind.
> You get accustomed to music, listening to it makes your brain addicted to such stimuli and when you abstain from it you have trouble concentrating. That's why you have such trouble concentrating without music.Music gives you value. It only satisfies your addiction. You can argue same way that nicotine gives you value.
This assumes that what I want is music -- but this is not just true. I'm fine with anything I need to spend some thought on parsing. A lot of the distractions I commonly use to keep myself grounded are in fact in no way pleasurable.
Now you have been provided with more data, please update your theory. :)
I can't believe that some people concentrate better with distractions than without them.
Personally, I last 2 or 3 times longer when doing anything mental if I have music playing. Easily. I'm also happier.
Trying to pass your beliefs off as our experiences is doomed to failure. There's always an exception, often millions of them, if you look around a different corner than you live on.
Substitute music with drink and imagine that your job is a doctor.
I'm just trying to point out that there is a possibility (a bit far fetch I agree) that listening to the music while you work is kind of mind numbing mild drug that maybe helps you to suffer through the drudgery of workday but it might be harmful to your ability to concentrate and the value of your work.
Oh man, I thought you had a valid argument - though one I disagreed with - till the last two comments.
Basically your argument has become along the lines of: you don't like music and therefore anyone that does has a "problem".
I personally can't comprehend people who work in silence! But I'm not judging people who do; just as music works for me, silence works for others. You've assumed silence can't be a distraction which, from my perspective, is wrong.
> Stop trying to pass your costly and possibly damaging addiction as something that improves your life and brings you value.
Drinks != music. Alcohol is known to slow reaction time and cognitive skills.
Instead of substituting music with drinks how about wonder if doctors also listen to music while they work. When I was pre-med (prior to becoming compsci) I went and observed a few surgeries. The surgeons were some of the most focused, professional people I've ever met and they had music playing in the OR. Go figure.
First off tasty beer, and coffee both improve my coding skills, and my quality of life. As for music, you may not like it, but for those of us who do... does it ever make life great.
As a total aside, I can't imagine exercising without music, it'd be like some form of torture.
I had a similar argument with my business partner the other day. When it comes down to it, you can only really comment on the work flow you enjoy.
He requires total radio silence to be productive, doesn't like IM, music, anything. Where as I love having conversations going while I am coding, gives me something to think about in the front of my mind, while particularly tricky problems get my idle thread. And often when I am not focusing on why I can't solve something, it will come to me.
Take me for example; my nano has barely left my side for the last 2 and a bit years - I work best with music around :) it's worth a lot.