Sound for Coding: What Helps, and When
Short answer: When the work is made of words (naming things, reading code and errors, thinking a bug through), use sound with no words in it, or none at all. When the work is mechanical (renaming, formatting, waiting for a build), almost anything goes.
| What you're doing | How much language | What tends to work |
|---|---|---|
| Writing new logic, naming things | A lot | Quiet, steady, wordless sound |
| Reading code, reviewing, reading errors | A lot | As little as you can get away with: low noise, sparse ambient, or silence |
| Thinking a bug through | A lot | Same as above |
| Renaming, formatting, routine edits | Little | Whatever you like, lyrics included |
| Waiting for builds and tests | None | Anything |
Why words are the problem
I'm a designer who builds things in code, so take this as notes from someone still working it out. What I noticed is that "coding" is several jobs. Some of them are reading and writing in a very strict language. Others are closer to tidying up.
For the reading and writing parts, the research on reading applies. A review of 65 studies found that background speech and music with lyrics disrupt reading the most. The likely reason is that words in your ears and words on the screen compete for the same attention.
Those studies are about reading text, not code. I'm assuming it carries over, because reading a stack trace or choosing a function name feels like the same kind of effort.
What I'd avoid
- Podcasts and talk while reading or writing code. Speech is the worst case in the research.
- Songs with lyrics in a language you understand, for the same reason.
- Anything with a strong beat during the thinking parts. A pulse is one more thing to follow.
What works for the thinking parts
Something steady with nothing to follow. If the room is loud, brown or pink noise. If it is quiet, slow ambient sound. I compared those two in Brown Noise vs Ambient Sound.
This is the case I built Ambient Sound Online for. It has no words, no melody to follow and nothing that loops, and I have worked to it for hours at a time. It runs in a browser tab, so it sits next to the editor without installing anything.
What works for the mechanical parts
Here the task leaves attention spare, and silence can make it drag. Music you like, lyrics included, is fine. Switch back when the work turns into reading again. That switch is the part people skip: one playlist for the whole day means the wrong sound for half of it.
Sources
- Vasilev, Kirkby and Angele, 2018: review of 65 studies on background sound and reading
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