When banging out obvious, straightforward, pre-planned code, music definitely keeps me in a rhythm and helps to avert boredom and a wandering attention span, but when I have to think deeply about a complex problem, eg. timing, races, nasty interactions, design, golf, etc, music is usually a distraction.

Styles I like range from electronica (orbital, chemical bros, sasha, oakenfold, daft punk) to classic rock (floyd, zeppelin) to alternative (tori amos, bel canto, hooverphonic) to disco (abba, Bee-Gee's, and all the awful stuff in between). I also find that long techno mix sets are coder-friendly in that the transitions between songs do not jar you out of your thought process, as they do with a bunch of mp3's set to "shuffle" :-)

   MeowChow                                   
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