zlacker

I can't listen to music at all when I'm designing the code, and I find it very distracting. Designing interfaces/APIs/etc is a higher bandwidth activity for me, and requires more focus, so music is a distraction.

But when I'm implementing the design, I find music very helpful. Just turning the code from design to actual code takes less focus from me, so I can end up getting distracted by other things in my environment if I don't have something else that can "fill up" the remaining amount of mental attention bandwidth. Also podcasts work even better than music for this.