Programming

Programmers Concentrate Better With White Noise (Free Generator Included)

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Distractions are the worst enemy when programming. We have to keep many thoughts going at once when slathering out the code on screen, and often times there are so many multi-tasked thoughts happening at once all it takes is a door slam, an email bong, or text alert to completely drop our train of thought, thus causing it to "re-think" everything we were just working on.

One of the ways you can help keep the focus is using white noise. White noise is a random signal with a flat (constant) power spectral density. In other words, a signal that contains equal power within any frequency band with a fixed width. So basically it's constant noise that helps drowned out other sounds around you because of it's ambience. There are many examples of natural white noise such as rain, oceans waves, crickets, even traffic.

Most of us know what it is, but have you actually tried it when you are working on that latest programming? I ran across this nifty little online sound generator built in HTML that is completely free to use, so give it a try and see if it helps you stay more focused.

At first any noise in our work environment seems like an announce, but let the sound roll for a few minutes before you ditch the idea entirely, it could just help you create the next Angry Birds.. I tried it, and it definitely helps me.