Why do programmers wear headphones while programming?

Samuel Lawrentz

Headphones are the best invention of mankind that has the ability to shut out all the other unwanted noises and fill your ears with the sounds that you desire. Being a programmer has a lot of challenges, like a junior programmer who comes to the office just to ask you silly doubts (Maybe he thinks that you are his StackOverflow), or a email that has no connection with the task you currently do but still you are asked to reply the mail or your colleague who becomes a reviewer for the movie he watched yesterday and is so enthusiastic to tell you about it, and many more instances occur which will make a programmer overheat and lose his focus.

The best way to avoid all these freaking unwanted stuff is to wear headphones. People think you are engaged and will find hard to disturb you.

Pro tip: If you really have to focus on a task without any disturbances or interruptions, just plug in your headphones and do not play any music. Just feel the uninterrupted workflow.

PS: I’m the junior programmer mentioned above :)

Edit: This is my first answer with so many upvotes!! Thank you guys!!

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Pranav Koustubh

Back when I was in college, I watched The Social Network and there was this scene where they plug in their headphones and code for hours together. I thought I'd plug my headphones in and study for exams. I couldn't. It was too distracting. So I thought it was a subjective thing, or more probably, something the director thought would be cool to show.

Fast forward to last week, I was running a machine learning simulation and was waiting for my result. I thought I'd listen to some music in the meantime. One song in, the output window showed some error and I started debugging my code. I fixed my code, I got my output, and I looked at the time. 2 hours had passed. I didn't pay attention to my colleagues, my phone, the songs playing in the background, or the fact that it was 1 hour after my usual leaving time. I didn't even feel like I'd put in any effort.

Music takes you to a state of zen where you don't actively focus on the task. Your fingers just type the code like you're writing a story.