I enjoy audio books. They are great for listening to in the car, or while you work, or while you're just hacking on something in the evening. They allow me to make maximum use of my busy schedule.
So I'm very pleased my wife just pointed me at http://www.audiobooksforfree.com/ which seems to be a collection of recorded versions of some books that are from Project Gutenburg, and some that aren't, all with small amounts of advertising interspersed throughout the books.
I don't know what the narrators will be like - often that's an important factor with audio books, but I'm definitely going to try it out.
That's a very interesting opint; I've recently tried listening to Radio 4 at the same time as being on the computer. I like R4, but it distracts me no end having people talking at the same time as I'm trying to think.
I guess that I'm just not multi-tasking enough.
Re:Listening whilst hacking
TorgoX on 2002-07-05T19:05:24
Yeah, I usually can't even have on music with vocals, if I'm doing anything complex. So now I've got a large collection of symphonic and ambient music to listen to instead.Re:Listening whilst hacking
Matts on 2002-07-05T22:34:35
Bizarre. Maybe I just multitask better. I remember reading somewhere that the artistic part of the brain is quite separate to the logical part of the brain, and it's quite possible for both to operate at the same time. Perhaps you guys are coding with your artistic side? (which there is nothing wrong with).Re:Listening whilst hacking
wickline on 2002-07-06T01:22:38
for me it's a language thing (I think).
writing/reading perl is like speaking/listening. Songs with lyrics grab
my attention and have me trying to listen. I can't "listen" to both.
Songs without lyrics are just fine though.
So, I can't code while listening to songs with lyrics. ...other activities are fine though :)
-matt
Listening while listening
TorgoX on 2002-07-06T03:30:59
Same here. I pass it off to my general inability to have two streams (whether sending or receiving) active in the speech decoding function of my brain -- like I find it almost impossible to understand one person if there's someone relatively nearby talking too, and I usually can't talk if there's someone else nearby talking too -- I just end up sputtering incoherently.Stupid linguistics trick: You can produce the same "sputtering incoherently" response in most people by playing back what they're saying with about a one-second delay. It's the next best thing to just inducing a seisure.
Re:Listening while listening
wickline on 2002-07-06T15:53:57
> Stupid linguistics trick
Now I'm gonna have to find a way to try that out ;)
-mattRe:Listening whilst hacking
ask on 2002-07-09T03:13:27
Depending on the kind of work I think everyone uses their creative side while programming. (Or rather while designing things).
For me it's more important if I know the music than if it has lyrics or not. I can also have the radio on too without too much trouble; but I rarely actually listen if I also work so I usually end up turning it off. :-)
- ask
