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Posted by: stak
Tags: mozilla
Posted on: 2012-06-08 11:45:58
I was reading Peopleware (excellent book, everybody in the software business should read it) and I found this particularly surprising:
During the 1960s, researchers at Cornell University conducted a series of tests on the effects of working with music. ... To no one's surprise, participants in the two rooms [silent room and room with earphones+music] performed about the same in speed and accuracy of programming. ...
The Cornell experiment, however, contained a hidden wild card. The specification required that an output data stream be formed through a series of manipulations on numbers in the input data stream. ... Although the specification never said it, the net effect of all the operations was that each output number was necessarily equal to its input number. Some people realized this and others did not. Of those who figured it out, the overwhelming majority came from the quiet room.
Many of the everyday tasks performed by professional workers are done in the serial processing center of the left brain. Music will not interfere particularly with this work, since it's the brain's holistic right side that digests music. But not all of the work is centered in the left brain. ... The creative leap involves right-brain function. If the right brain is busy listening to 1001 Strings on Muzak, the opportunity for a creative leap is lost.
What do you think? Do you like listening to music while coding? Do you find it affects your creativity and/or productivity?
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