

Talking on a mobile phone, you're less likely to notice the unicycling clown - RiderOfGiraffes
http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2010/07/talking-on-mobile-phone-youre-less.html

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RiderOfGiraffes
I sometimes wonder how much this relates to listening to music while coding.
Sometimes we're banging out code that requires very little planning or
thought, and noise or music in the background really doesn't matter.

But sometimes code requires care and craft. In those cases we need not to be
distracted by outside noise. Some people achieve this by having known
noise/music on their headphones, and they claim they can think and work
without a problem.

But are they susceptible to the same kind of inadvertent inattention described
here? Can they tell? By definition - no.

I've still not succeeded in tracking down the study referred to in Peopleware
where they allegedly tested this. I'd really, _really_ like to see it
reproduced.

Or refuted.

~~~
prodigal_erik
I hope they distinguish between music and vocals. Coding to techno has
subjectively gone pretty well, and it seems reasonable that hearing words
should be more of a problem.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes

      > ... subjectively ...
    

That's the question. Maybe you would, in fact, code "better" (whatever that
means) with complete silence.

I'm interested in the difference between music you're accustomed to and music
that's less familiar, words, no words, loud, soft, silence, _etc._ You think
you like techno, but maybe, just maybe, objectively something else would be
better.

