I’ve been thinking about the music I listen to while coding. It’s a oddly personal thing—what helps one person focus completely destroys another person’s concentration.
For deep work, I need music without lyrics. Lyrics compete with the internal voice that’s reading code, and my brain can’t handle both streams simultaneously. This rules out most of my favorite music, which is a small tragedy.
My go-to coding playlist has evolved over the years:
Classical minimalism: Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Max Richter. Repetitive patterns that create a sonic landscape without demanding attention. Perfect for debugging sessions that stretch into hours.
Post-rock instrumentals: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Rós. Music that builds and releases tension, matching the rhythm of solving complex problems.
Ambient electronic: Brian Eno, Tim Hecker, William Basinski. Music that’s almost not there, creating atmosphere without distraction. Ideal for when you need to disappear into the code.
Lo-fi hip hop: The meme became a cliche for good reason. Those gentle beats and jazzy samples create a consistent rhythm that somehow makes everything feel more manageable.
But sometimes the best music for coding is no music at all. Silence that lets you hear the click of keys, the hum of the computer, the sound of your own thinking. There’s something meditative about coding in complete quiet, just you and the problem you’re trying to solve.
The wrong music can destroy a flow state instantly. Too energetic and you get distracted. Too emotional and you lose focus. Too familiar and you start singing along.
The right music, though, can transform coding from work into something closer to meditation. It creates a bubble around you, a space where complex problems become solvable and elegant solutions emerge.
What do you listen to when you code?