Slashdot Mirror
Do Recreational Drugs Help Programmers?
jfruh writes "Among the winners of last night's election: marijuana users. Voters in both Washington and Colorado approved referenda that legalized marijuana for recreational use, though the drug remains illegal under federal law. There's been a long-standing debate among programmers as to whether recreational drugs, including pot and hallucinagens like LSD, can actually help programmers code. Don't forget, there was a substantial overlap between the wave of computer professionals who came of age in the '60s and that era's counterculture." (There's even a good book on that topic.)
Absolutely.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I will program something while not being high and see if it makes a difference, later though. So far I am still collecting data points.
Is the pot free as in beer or free as in speech
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
First cup of coffee gets first post!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains. The stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion
Exactly what are the drugs supposed to help?
Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro
Why is this not an "Ask Slashdot" question?
then Cthulhu t-shirts and mugs and solstice carols are good for programming.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for legalizing drugs. And I don't like it one bit that my tax money goes into making victims of some harmless pot smokers.
But [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cum_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc]cum hoc ergo propter hoc[/url] is a fallacy for a reason.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Is this valid? Everything I read indicates that the federal government will threaten to withhold funding to those states and force them to essentially make pot illegal again.
*the cat seems to be know something...*
"Dude, did you see where I put that lighter?"
*Must get test routines done for code review tomorrow....*
*Woah.. how'd my browser get on Ebay buying troll dolls?*
"Dude, did you see where I put that lighter?"
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
.. Were both developed at Berkley :)
Weed does, keeps me more focused and motivated, also helps with giving different perspective on problems solving - big part in programming.
I would expect code produced under the influence to have more bugs, less comments and generally be an unmaintainable mess.
Those who do will of course say that it does and will provide anecdotal evidence (although I'm sure most of them have not actually performed any controlled tests to verify that claim). Most studies would indicate that drugs would not aid in many of the mental processes involved in programming, but that won't change anyone's mind, and I definitive statement can't be made until studies are done to specifically test this assertion.
Voters in both Washington and Colorado approved referenda that legalized marijuana for recreational use
Valve Corporation is an American video game development and digital distribution company based in Bellevue, Washington, United States.
If HL2:EP3 finally comes out, I guess we'll know what to thank.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
We'll never have the materials to clinically test this theory on us 60's came-of-agers. We took them all.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
And you probably drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes. Sad.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
In case you were tempted to RTFA, don't. You have to click through two ad-laden pages, and there really isn't any more information than in the summary.
Do a DNA sequence and publish the results under an "open" license.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Could it help programmers? Possibly, if you work in a high-stress environment.
Would it improve the code? Would you want to be the guy who has to maintain code written by another developer who was high?
Does coding while drunk result in good code? For a mentally-intensive task, why would any mind-altering substance be generally beneficial?
THC... sometimes for certain people. It helps me focus, and some of the best code I've done has been while stoned.
LSD on the other hand... I can't even read the text on the screen and find it difficult just to play music on my computer. I think that after the fact it leaves one with a more holistic and empathic perspective on life, but it sure as hell can't help you at the time of being high - similarly with pretty much any other psychedelic drug (I have the term hallucinogen, because they don't really make you hallucinate, strictly speaking).
But I would argue that the type of person who would try recreational drugs is also the type of person that might get into programming. Curious, risk taking and someone who doesn't want to be told what to do or fit into a mold? Yeah sounds about right.
Drugs do things to your brain that make you realize certain things.
The fallacy is assuming that the only path to these realizations come through drugs.
(It's worth mentioning that drugs have numerous downsides as well.)
If you learn to meditate, or for those with aversion to religion to "think hard," you'll get everything you could from drugs.
This isn't an anti-drug argument; that's for someone else's thread. It's an argument against assuming drugs can give you something that can't get another way.
If the potential is within the mind, clearly it's the important element, not the drugs.
Had a stoner friend back in school who thought weed made him do everything better. In reality it made him do everything WORSE, but he was too stoned to realize it. Creative people think weed helps them, but it doesn't. That's just some horseshit they've convinced themselves of, as an excuse to smoke more weed.
It's like the old idea among Wall St. types that cocaine allowed them to work harder and longer. Yeah, it does...and also work a lot dumber. Read a quote once from an old-school SNL writer from the late-70's-early 80's who said "Cocaine gives you diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of the brain." Pretty much sums it up for most drugs.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
You end up with a short term gain and long term problems. Anyone who tells you different has not reached the other end yet.
For example aderall lets you concentrate to a very effective degree. Until you start need to up the dose to get the same effect. Then you give up and are a wreck for it.
Cocaine makes you spazzy.
Codine sorts of things makes you relaxed and happy until you are full blown addicted to it.
Caffeine makes you a 'bit spazzy' but long term you keep having to up the dose to get the same effect. Then trying to quit = massive I am going to throw up my lungs headaches.
Weed makes you mellow. But eventually you get paranoid.
So yes you can 'hack' your body. But remember sometimes what you do can NOT be undone.
Don't forget, there was a substantial overlap between the wave of computer professionals who came of age in the '60s and that era's counterculture
And there was a non significant number that did not touch it. You are trying to justify a position with spurious thinking. This is usually the words of someone who is doing something they know is stupid yet want to justify it in some way. Just man up and say 'I am doing something stupid'.
I will gladly participate in this study should anyone procure the proper lab materials.
The Ballmer Peak:
http://xkcd.com/323/
Kind of obligated reference : http://xkcd.com/323/
1500mg Test-E EOD, 25mg Deca, 15mg Winny.
I don't know those states' referendum laws, but in some states, the legislature cannot, on its own, override a referendum.
The feds can make the voters WISH they'd voted another way by hitting them in the pocketbook, but it may take a full run of the referendum process to roll back these new laws.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I've smoked pot and explored ideas relating to my highly technical job that I feel I wouldn't have otherwise. I drew up elaborate diagrams, worked through highly difficult mathematics to express ideas and actually develop reliable hardware that is still being used by a specialized technical department to train and use in the field. My company employs over 10,000 people. I had a stint of pot smoking for about a year, but quit because I fear losing my job, but in the time that I did, I would venture to say I was more productive than I am now.
As with anything, moderation is key. As I remember from my college days there are a few times where I got so out of it I was couched locked and did not want to do anything.
The typical drug war debate aside, I personally wouldn't toke up every time I had to program. I know how it affects me and sometimes being sober for work is a good thing. Just keep it simple and enjoy it as a treat when your work is done. Just like one would treat alcohol.
The body compensates to anything one throws at it to make up for the temporary gains. It's a zero sum gain sadly. Just enjoy it as a treat or treatment if you really need it for a disease/disability.
And you're probably a lazy sack who gets baked and writes circular Ruby on Rails apps.
See what i did there?
The problem is just like with car drivers under light intoxication: the impression to be better is not the same as being better, and the false impression hurts the results additionally.
Productivity might improve with performance-enhancing drugs, like cocaine, caffeine, amphetamines. But that is not the same as "quality". Heavy abuse of pot is linked to deterioration of analytical capabilities and personality. That's not to say that an occasional shake on the old brain cells might not deliver new ideas, it is just the old problem of keeping it occasional.
Over a population, certain individuals will likely benefit from almost anything. Drawing conclusions for the population will be impossible and doing so will produce errors.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Of course it does. But then it takes hundreds of times as long to remove all the extra bugs written in.
A lot of people think they perform better, or are more attractive, or that other people are more attractive (an affliction known as beer goggles) when under the influence of something. All that happens in fact is that their judgement is impaired. There's no reason to think that the application of other mood/mind altering substances: dope, caffeine etc. would improve a mental performance more than it would cloud their judgement. They may well think it improves their programming skills, but that's just another case of poor judgement.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I've always drawn a fine line between "neckbeards" and "hippies."
The line has always been something like: "hippies do recreational drugs and talk about how enlightening it is, but neckbeards do recreational drugs and actually become enlightened."
Pretty much goes without saying, without weirdo outliers and queers the world would be a pretty boring and primitive place.
I had to go to work the day after an Event with MDMA in my system still, found myself with certain music able to submerse myself in the environment and focus on what I needed to accomplish.
If I use a vaporizer I can code, but if I smoke I can't at all. It doesn't help me, it just makes it hard to concentrate. On the other hand, I do smoke fairly often and I work for one of the best contracting firms in the U.S (based in Boulder, CO).
It does help me tremendously when I draw, play guitar or exercise. Helps me relax (mind and muscles) after a few days of the stress building up (usually around Wednesday for me).
Also a huge help when doing any type of biology or physics.
Of course psychedelics are extremely helpful for all types of creative thinking. That being said, there needs to be a foundation to work with. There needs to be "demons" i.e. patterns of experience coded into the brain, which will form the substrate,if you will for creative breakthroughs, which means learning and hard work at whatever art or craft the person is focused. Psychedelics can be a major boost.
Don't worry, I got this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBcVbV6_Vwc
Instead of making a correlation between drug use and good programming, the question should be if the people who come up with the creative solutions to unique problems (good coders) also have a predilection towards using mind altering substances or just in participating in activities that go against the grain of what is today our norm in society.
I've worked in the Seattle area for a bit over a decade and voted to approve the new legislation involving marijuana.
I'm not aware of any of my co-workers during the last ten years who did drugs. Most of them excercise regularly, try to eat a healthy diet, and have a number of physical and intellectual pursuits, and a very involved family life. I can't say that they don't use marijuana, but it seems unlikely they would use it on a regular basis given the negative impact it has.
I voted to approve it because while I think using recreational drugs is a very risky and unwise choice, making them illegal has not helped people make better choices. I feel the 'War on Drugs' is a failure (and I'm tired of everything being a 'War') and want us as a society to move onto a new experiment.
Recreational drugs serve more as a device to cope with Management than they do for any other aspects of developing code.
Posting anon for obvious reasons.. I use pot recreationally (not everyday or anything), and although I wouldn't say it particularly helps me code, it does help me find good solutions to problems I am stuck on. So, often, I've used it and then put some time and effort into thinking about a problem I'm having, and it helps me think in a different way.
But, I guess YMMV.
I've been a professional programmer for 21 years, and I'll admit I've written some of my best code in the middle of the night, fueled by caffeine and alcohol.
In the end, I think the main question really is, can the use of “mind expanding” drugs (hallucinogens) help programmers to “think outside the box” and come up with more solutions (or more creative solutions) to difficult problems?
And really, by now, it is extremely rare that I have to think outside the box. 99.9% of what I program is a combination of things I've done before, or learning how someone else's API works. Coming up with a new algorithm is rare.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Interesting idea, but one problem...
Where the hell would you find any drug-free programmers to use as a control group?
I suppose you group them into tweakers (stimulant users) vs psychonauts (hallucinogen users), using the FDA's standard "best known therapy as the control" protocols...
Drugs and alcohol didn't improve my output, rather I'd say it and getting older slightly reduced my productivity. On the other hand I'm no longer a lone hypertense wreck that was convinced I'd end up either killing myself and/or lots of people before the age of 30.
Sensationalism at its finest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
No I don't, how in the world did you reach that conclusion having no information about me? I thought so. I just destroyed you.
Checkmate.
http://xkcd.com/323/
... Guru Meditation ?
I have dealt with stoned programmers on the work-site, beside some funny weird behavior they constantly forgot to properly end statements in their code.
But much fun getting them to debug after they sobered up.
Every stoner thinks they are geniuses when stoned. Even geniuses. I famously recall Carl Sagan commenting on his and his wife's drug use and how he felt his writing process was more elucidated while high on marijuana.
Of course, every stoner thinks they are Carl Sagan when high. "Man, l can like totally see it now, it's like, there are like billions and billions... served at this McDonalds..."
How about this: Good programmers are good programmers because they're talented. Whether or not they use drugs or alcohol probably doesn't have much effect on that. Other than, perhaps it allows them to sit in one place for a long period of time and not be concerned with other things that would drag them away from the task. Relaxing helps lots of things, but it's also occasionally counter-productive. Pros and cons exist in every scenario. Can we stop looking for justification for recreational drug use? I personally don't have a problem with mary jane, even though I don't use it myself. What baffles me is that, "I want to" never seems to be enough justification for doing so. If you like recreational drugs and you can use them without destroying your life, and the lives of those who depend on you then, "I like it" is justification enough for me; it should be for the person actually using them as well.
They very well might improve imagination, but for serious scientific tasks no.
Some might keep you awake, and improve your typing speed, but they will also have you making more mistakes (and have you suffering longitudinal problems from lack of sleep).
If there was a way for out current body/brain structure to be improved with just a little stimulation then evolution would of picked up on that missing feature a long time ago.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
You make bizarre assumptions, and state them as fact.
I'm fairly certain my predecessor was stoned or tripping acid when he wrote the code I have to maintain and I have no doubt he THOUGHT he was writing good code. Code is basically logic, math. Logic and drugs don't go together. Please get high AFTER work, not while coding.
With the amount of evidences that shows it hurt productivity, I'm not sure why anyone thinks thins is a controversy.
Have these people ever worked with stoned people?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
People like you are the reason why you have many co-workers who smoke pot every day but don't tell you about it.
Discussion over.
I would think more IQ points == better programmer.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/aug/27/cannabis-damaging-under-18s-study
Well if you take a drug that boosts your confidence, you will think you just wrote the best code of your life.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Posting AC for obvious reasons, but I've got my two cents to add about pot use.
Used responsibly, I've found it to be intensely therapeutic and life improving. (Responsible meaning don't get blazed every day, don't got to work/school stoned, don't make a jackass of yourself in public stoned. Just treat it like alcohol and you'll be fine)
While the experience itself fun and relaxing, I've noticed a huge reduction in the social anxiety I've suffered with all my life. It's vastly improved my personal life and my productivity at work. I've gotten praise from all of my bosses about my "improved communication skills". (I used to have a huge problem with that annoying geek superiority complex)
I don't know if it's a result of the rather deep internal reflection during meditative state it puts me in, or the lingering effects of cannabanoid accumulation. (They linger in your system for a good 22ish days) But I imbibe very infrequently and still gain the positive benefits for weeks afterward.
And that's about it. I'm not sick, or in pain. I just do it for fun. The life improving aspects were simply a nice side effect.
There is a large amount of research showing that THC can heighten ones ability to focus as well as problem/puzzle solve. Of course anyone posting with comments including the word "druggie" and "stoners" already has their blinders on so this research won't matter to them, they of course already know better. Enjoy you cigarettes and alcohol, they are the only morally acceptable drugs anyway.
And you need to troll better.
Sometimes when I go to long thinking on a problem, I stop and have a beer or a glass of wine, a bit after that, the brains changes the way it thinks about the problem. Often times this brings a better/faster abstract solution and worst/buggier code.
Steroids improve athletic performance. LSD increases ridiculousness (yellow submarine, anyone?) sober helps logic (programming) Sure there will be a few exceptions to any rule, but the rule is still valid.
Fucking up your liver is ok, fucking up your brain is not.
When I was on the Windows 8 UI development team, we all were taking Meth and PCP daily. And look at the wonderful and innovative design we came up with!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
A good programmer is someone who solves a problem in a cost effective way. Potheads almost necessarily have poor judgement and they are not serious negotiators. Even better, some of them have criminal records that make them cost peanuts to hire.
I think more programmers should use drugs because it makes them cheaper. Any loss of intelligence is at a level where the marginal returns on their extra skill had diminished long ago anyway. If I want elegant code, I can hire a bunch of stoners to hack something together for very little, then give it to one sharp rock star to refactor. I can even tell the rock star that I'm not going to pay him his super-rate because I've got a room full of programmers who work for half.
So glad these ballot initiatives passed.
No I don't
Oh, well, our mistake. Next time we'll be sure to indicate that it's just a bloody example of popular, socially-acceptable vices, and is in no way limited to the few listed.
how in the world did you reach that conclusion having no information about me?
Because as previously stated, it was merely a small sample of popular, socially-acceptable vices. We all have our vices, and the point GP was trying to get across is that people wish to demonize the vices of others, while maintaining their own.
I just destroyed you.
Checkmate.
I lol'd.
I used to sit down, smoke some pot, and think about programming problems. I would draw diagrams and write down ideas. Afterwards, most of them turned out to be crap. But some had merit.
Coding while high, however, did not work for me. To hard to focus.
Don't forget, there was a substantial overlap between the wave of computer professionals who came of age in the '60s and that era's women's liberation movement.
Would you want to be the guy who has to maintain code written by another developer who was high?
Alcohol is legal. How many programmers go to work shitface drunk?
You should ask instead, do you want to be the guy who maintains code written by another developer who uses recreational drugs in the privacy of their own home?
:(){
The stress kills me.
Need to have time to forget what looms...
aa
This is your code:
This is your code on drugs:
Any questions?
There is a trade-off between getting each step right first time by absolute concentration eg. coding, and wasting time exploring the solution-space at the speed of an ant. A lot of programming involves juggling eggs and a mind trained not to drop stitches is required. On the other-hand you can't cross a ditch with lots of tiny steps no mater how small you make them - you need to jump. SOME way of letting 'what the heck' out of the bottle can be a very useful mind tool for minds that are trained to analyse and check everything. Chemical means is one, requirement not to be a 'total nerd' in public another. You could try serious habit-forming methods but cider is more fun -- is there something wrong with that?
I have to pass a drug test to get a job. I rarely have to take another one after I start, but you never know when you will be laid off. You have to be crazy to do illegal drugs. If you can't pass a drug test, you don't get the job. I have had to do this at several places.
don't drink and derive.
Funny thing about destructive/disgusting tendencies: you are not the sole arbiter of morality. Making your declarations as if from on high (if only) just shows your authoritarian nature. The "destructive/disgusting" tendencies are excesses which you will not find me supporting. But moderate use which does not endanger the lives of others - how could you be against that in any form? Your personal morality is just that: a conscious decision on your part to follow dictums which you agree with. Liberty is being able to follow your own moral compass and freedom means not having that liberty infringed upon. When you deny liberty then you deny your own.
Don't forget, there was a substantial overlap between the wave of computer professionals who came of age in the '60s and that era's sexual revolution movement.
This is mindless conjecture from the pro-drug movement that wants every man, woman, and child to be high.
I've been in the biz for 13 years and have had co-workers who used drugs, and in every case they were unstable, unpredictable, and poor at what they did. Why? Because getting high was more important than anything, their hygiene, their job, etc. Drugs were the priority and the job was secondary. Not one of them functioned better while high, and it's ridiculous to think that impairing yourself could improve the way you program.
Guess what drug users did their best work? The ones that got cleaned up. This applies to the drunkards too, I'm certainly not going to defend them.
and i stop tripping
After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands. Friedrich Nietzsche
Have you seen the color scheme for Surface? That has "bad trip" written all over it.
But they sure wont help you keep your job if HR finds out about it.
http://saveie6.com/
This same question gets asked about writers and alcohol.
the question will be stated something like: There have been many incredibly talented writers who also abused alcohol (Hemingway immediately comes to mind - but there is there is a large sample size). Did alcohol make them better writers? Will alcohol make you a better writer?
The popular answer is: "The genius that made them great writers probably contributed to thier drinking, but drinking didn't make them great writers."
Drinking might make people think they are great writers, but simply being a drunk won't improve your writing. the cliche "correlation doesn't imply causality" applies.
Many great programmers may have also used recreational drugs - but recreational drugs didn't make them great programmers.
in both writing and coding there is a lot of hard work involved to become (and stay) "good" at your craft - and addiction (to anything) will interfere.
But remember: Mr Garrison says drugs are bad.
So just say no.
This is your brain: this is your brain on /.
Follow your dreams, but stay in school.
It ain't what they call you. It's what you answer to. http://mylyceum.us/
Yes, I'm posting anonymously, all the pot has made me paranoid!
No seriously, long programming career here, so here's my anecdotal evidence.
Smoked on the way to work and at lunch time for years and years.
It gave me motivation because I enjoyed my work more, and no one has every complained about the clarity of my code, in fact the opposite.
As I've aged, I've slowed down on pot use and no longer feel as inspired as I once did.
It seems that class of molecules has a natural function in the brain, to ease or wipe bad memories. Coding is stressful and honestly if you remember every single detail all the time it would overburden you from being locally focussed when needed, let alone socially functional. How many burned out coders do you know who just broke cause they held onto it all. Also as far as a work life balance, people need to chill out and marijuana is one way people do that.
Now if we are talking about heavy chronics, that is a different story.. the one benefit is that it keeps them in their chairs I guess.. but beyond that not so much.
Don't forget, there was a substantial overlap between the wave of computer professionals who came of age in the '60s and that era's nuclear weapons development and testing.
For my part, I obviously don't use illegal drugs at work and I'm doing fine. But I can see that most of the programmers, including me, using energy drinks, or shit load of coffee. It seems obvious to me that caffeine is a great drug for programming as much for most of other jobs and activities.
Sometimes at home however, I like to smoke a spliff, read some code on the Github which eventually results in coding my own projects after a while. I have never used any stronger stuff for programming, because it doesn't make much sense for me. While you can get some inspiration, programming is a very focused activity with little room for being dreamy, thus I would say that anything that is stronger than a lightly made joint would be counter-productive for coding.
I suggest, recreational drugs should belong to our recreational time. Many geeks I know has a huge problem with separating from the computer, at least a little recreational time should detach us from the matrix.
Adderall/dex/meth/speed is used for recreational and also prescribed for the very purpose of helping cognitive performance. The answer to the question depends on many factors, and it simply doesn't make any sense at all to lump all "recreational drugs" in the same box.
They're not all the same at all.
From my experience the answer is no. I was a heavy drug user for 10 years, I now have trouble concentrating, I draw a blank all the time, everything is foggy, etc.. I quit doing drugs 5 years ago, but the after effects still linger to this day. I still play around with android and qt and I write apps for myself because I love to program, but it's only a hobby at this point.
I'm probably a fringe case though, I think the majority of people can smoke pot and be perfectly fine. I wouldn't recommend mixing drugs and programming though, you need a clear mind and a healthy body.
I think this article makes some good points:
http://blog.seangransee.com/post/35254966580/no-studying-after-5pm-using-parkinsons-law-to-kick
While I agree that you shouldn't mod GP down because of disagreeing...I do believe GP should be modded down. He uses inflammatory and trolling language.
"This Is Disgusting And Sick"? Filthy, vile, and destructive? Timothy is irresponsible and should be fired?
This is exactly the kind of language that stops thoughtful discussion, and should be discouraged accordingly by the mods.
Whatever your opinion is of recreational drugs, this animosity toward people minding their own business in the privacy of their own home is reminiscent of those who think violent video games caused the Columbine massacre and other real-world violence. It is a simple fact that humans generally consumes large amounts of chemicals that alter the way our mind and body work, and our society generally manages to do just fine. And just like some people will be violent psychopaths who just happen to be gamers, some people will self destruct who just happen to use recreational drugs.
:(){
Don't forget, there was a substantial overlap between the wave of computer professionals who came of age in the '60s and that era's space program culminating in manned landing on the moon in the late '60s and early '70s, the original aring of Star Treck, the release of 2001, Space Odessy and much other thought about space.
They wouldn't have then adopted policies of giving speed out like candy in combat situations if it impaired performance more than they helped it.
That depends entirely on what is being impaired and what is being helped. The military has certain rather specific objectives. It's reasonable that they can find some performance enhancing drugs that aid with those objectives. However ALL drugs have side effects and it is entirely likely that soldiers performance in other areas of cognition are degraded at the same time. In combat falling asleep or being drowsy might mean getting killed which is a worse outcome than most other drug effects so a stimulant might make sense in spite of some pretty severe side effects.
If you're a good programmer, pow, you got it.
I don't know about other recreational drugs, but I've heard about people using Ritalin to help improve their focus.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Most people don't know Pot comes in a very wide variety of effects (and side effects). Some might make a person drowsy while another might make a person more alert. One might have a side effect of affecting short term memory. Another strain might not, but cause something else. Some strains might very well be useful for coding. There are lots of Sativa dominant strains that are very similar to amphetamines / caffiene, in that they have a stimulant effect and in many people tend to stimulate creativity. It's really impossible to say definitively marijuana does this or that with so many varieties around. Many American recreational users are just concerned with raw THC content when this matters very little (it's the balance of different Cannabinoids that makes the difference). The government's lack of attention to this issue in their propaganda does little to help. Medical users, on the other hand, have known these things for decades. You have one strain for the day, and one for the night time. If you're going to try pot, my recommendation is to do your research. Start off with an Indica dominant strain unlikely to cause paranoia (the most unpleasant side effect), and graduate up to something that is a little more cerebral and leaves you less drowsy. My personal recommendation is Hindu Kush. It's a very calming, typical Indica smoke but at the same time is totally like other Indicas in that it won't leave you drowsy
FTFY.
Have gnu, will travel.
It's a fun topic to debate but the question is pretty fuzzy. "Recreational drugs" vary so widely in their effects that you can't really say anything about all of them at once. "Help" is also a subjective term that would need to be further defined to have any meaningful discussion.
I'll also put out there that anyone who hasn't done much of them is unqualified to answer.
Personally, and speaking very generally, ie. the way this question would typically be taken, I would say that they do not help. More specifically:
- Depressants such as pot and alcohol can help you think more creatively but tend to erode motivation and coding accuracy/efficiency.
- Hallucinogens (LSD, DMT, MDA, 2CB, shrooms etc) in normal doses also help creativity but will usually make interacting with the computer difficult or impossible. At very low doses (see LSD microdosing) there can be potential for augmenting sharpness of mind and attention.
- Most energetic stimulants (cocaine, meth, crystal, crack) make you too wired to sit still and focus on a task like programming. Way too little attention span.
- Speed is an exception to the above. With lower doses it can help keep you focused and awake almost indefinitely without being foggy. This the one drug I would say has the ability to help, even if it doesn't allow you to do anything you couldn't already with willpower and enough Jolt.
- MDMA (ecstasy) I consider a class on its own. Coming up with and talking about programming ideas could work very well but sitting in front of a computer doing a task that needs a clear head would definitely be problematic due to the mashy fogginess. Besides, why code when you could be hugging someone or dancing?
- I couldn't tell you about heroin but from what I've seen in movies it doesn't look like something you can code on at all!
FWIW I've been coding for about 30 years. Hope this helps :)
I think in rare cases it can help, but it largely impairs your ability to code. A small amount of substance use can slightly impair the brain and allow you to be less rigid in your thinking and get past a block by considering valid ideas you would immediately dismiss otherwise. It's the same way a small amount of alcohol in your blood will impair motor function a small amount to act as a muscle relaxant which can help smooth out your motion and make you more precise at certain tasks, like a game of darts or pool, but it very quickly becomes a serious impairment.
These are basically crude solutions to the fact that our brains are prone to overfitting our patterns for how to come to a solutions. Yes it can help, but 9/10 it is probably more harmful and there certainly isn't some hidden potential that is unlocked by regular substance use and there are certainly means of getting past code blocks or coming up with more elegant solutions that don't require it. If you came up with a great idea while using, there are was probably a safer way to get the creative juices lowing without it.
There is no memory shortage. yes I have heard of XFCE. Go away.
No I don't
Oh well then just say that you're straightedge instead of demonizing recreational drug use, and I'll just respect your decision and quietly pity you instead of responding to a ridiculous post.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I won't deny that smoking pot has had its influence in the artistic creative-arts world. But programming involves thinking-things-through, and being logical, and not being lazy. Pot does not help this at all. Maybe caffeine and amphetamine based drugs though. That'll perk you up and get you focussed on getting things done, which is required for programming.
I don't know if it was my age (late 20s) or what, but I found that my best programming was when I smoked (hand-rolled cigarettes, usually Drum).
There was something about smoking and staring at code or errors or whatever that really enabled me to focus. Maybe nicotine has a similar effect to Aderall or other stimulant-based ADHD drugs?
I quit smoking years ago and quit smoking in the house years before that; now I find that my best focus is early morning after drinking about 6-8 standard cups of coffee (about two travel mugs). Coffee isn't as effective as nicotine, but then again, I'm nearly 20 years older, too.
Coincidentally, I was also using a DEC VT320 at this same time as my terminal (via dial-up) to a Slackware system. Added focus may have come from fewer distractions, too, like not being able to click into other Windows or whatever. Although trn was always a window away via screen.
Studies have been done where they tested learning, while under the influence of alcohol, cannabis, etc. and later tested these individuals on the learned material.
They found that testing improved when they were under the influence if they had learned under the influence. Cramming all night eating pot brownies would show better test results if you did pot brownies when taking a test on the material.
Note: These were small, level 1, doses here, not baking yourself into oblivion or drinking until you passed out.
From a programming standpoint, which usually is not a one day coding effort on real projects, do you think that would that require maintaing a semi-constant "high" or drug effect to aid in the project? If you've developed code following a certain way of thinking, would going dry alter your thinking enough to cause programming inconsistencies to what you first designed?
On another note, I personally make and use psychedelics. I find them to be tremendously useful in allowing you to think is amazing new ways. Not every idea has ended up past the drawing board, but I've been able to construct completely different ways to do something that I had never even thought of doing before, which is one of the nice side effects of the particular psychedelics (the mind expanding type) that I make. I've had some great strides in developing different topologies for neural networks and training them directly related to the ideas brought on from the use of these substances which did not require me to use them after the initial "idea" was come across
Is it good? Bad? For me they work. But then I take them specifically for mind expansion. Most people I know, who do weed or booze, is for depression or stress relief. I don't see someone sitting in a bar drinking whiskey because they want to find new spiritual meaning. I can't speak for weed, but most I know use it for relaxation or have fun, not to gain new insights. Or maybe they do. Any weed smokers do it purely for the intellectual opportunities?
Anyone else use psychedelics to try new avenues of thinking?
I'm a satanic clam.
I've done this, so I'll tell you my experience.
A very small amount of pot may help with coding in that it just makes it more interesting. Anything more than that though and my ability to code degrades. Coding requires a lot of sort of type-A abilities. All-your-ducks-in-a-row pedantic-type stuff. Pot makes this type of work more difficult. You are more likely to loose track of all the logical operations you are holding together in your head and have to re-review. That said, it is doable still, but not improved. You are more likely to end up with spagetti code. In addition, because you may not perfectly remember what you were doing the next day due to the state change and mary jane's effects on memory, it may also be harder to work from your previous work.
Hallucinogens are impossible to code on. Fuck, how are you going to write a complex piece of code when you spend minutes on end marveling that your corporeal form is a being with hands.
I'd imagine Cocaine or Ritalin may be some drugs that could help with coding, though I've never tried either, so wouldn't be one to comment.
Helps me concentrate on specific tasks if I know what to do. It puts me "in the zone" in ways that soberiety simply can not do.
However, it is counter productive when having to plan out what I need to do in the first place. The architecture and high level planning/design/etc doesn't work for me in any state other than being sober.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
I was a casual pot smoker decades ago. I tried, several times, to write code while stoned. Invariably, I regretted it in the next day. It was like looking at someone else's code and realizing that the other person really doesn't understand programming at all.
The problem (devil?), I think, was in the details. You get some terrific ideas when you're stoned. (Also some terrible ideas, but we'll stay positive for now.) Broad, general, sweeping ideas about how to do something in the most elegant manner imaginable. Better than anything that's come before. Then you sit down and actually try to write the stuff and realize that the compiler is extremely, extremely picky about everything. You also realize that you can only hold about two things in your head at a time, which makes handling complex data structures or algorithms really challenging. It's like trying to drive a cheap RC car from one point to another, where all you can do is go forward in a straight line and turn right in reverse. You can get there, but the route is torturous. Going from a broad idea to the details of writing code is not well accomplished while stoned. You have to hold too many things in your head simultaneously.
Bottom line, I discovered that it was a lot better doing other stuff stoned than write software. Programming with a perfectly clear head is way more satisfying in the long run. Of course, all this was a very long time ago. Maybe if I returned to smoking now I would think differently.
That seems true. This explains Honey Boo-Boo, dubstep and the prevalence of SUVs on the roads.
I'm not sure I agree, however. Underlying brain fog probably has a cause. This may be physiological or emotional. If it's physiological, meditation may not be the answer, but more sleep, better nutrition, or more exercise may be the answer. I'm not qualified to hypothesize beyond that point :)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Espresso + Sativa = Productivity
Hash = Good Ideas
Indica = Sleepy Procrastination
I would say it helps programmers in the same way that it has helped many great philosophers.
It helps you take a step back from a specific focus on particular details.
While looking at a bigger picture, your mind starts to pick up on subtle patterns which can shape the underlying paradigm of your work.
The whole universe is now part of the framework and you'll start to wonder what, if anything, black holes have to do with class inheritance.
Did I initialize that variable or did that already happen in another plane of reality? I better sit back and smoke another one before I get too ahead of myself.
An anecdote: My athletic club used to participate in a state program to employ the mentally challenged. The guy who cleaned our locker room was slow. But he was a nice guy and proud to have a job that he could do, and do well. This level of pride motivated him to always do his best and, as a result, we had a fantastically clean locker room. After a while, the program was discontinued and he was replaced by (I suspect) a college student who needed some part time income. The locker room became a slimy mess and the attendant always had a bad attitude about the complaints.
So, I suppose if you have a job that involves repeated hour after hour of monotonous drudgery, knocking a few points off the old IQ might help. Pot smoking (a popular recreational drug) has been shown to impede the creation of short term memory. That might explain stoners' tolerance for doing repetitive work without complaint. It isn't so bad with long term memory, so learned skills are probably still available. Just don't count on converting much current experience (short term memory) into new learning.
Personally, if someone gives me a monotonous job, I figure its a candidate for automation. I figure out a way for the computer to do it (automated code generation from requirements documents, for example) and free up time for something challenging.
Have gnu, will travel.
...are excellent tools for enhancing creative thought and coming up with entirely new approaches to solve problems. Unfortunately controlled experiences will always be far too subjective to come to any scientific conclusion, but I would certainly recommend the use of these to introverts and deep thinkers. I wish the 'stoner' stigma would disappear, if you have a decent brain in your head these substances will certainly help you get the most out of it and (contrary to popular belief) will not turn you into a lazy, Cheetos-eating pothead.
I would recommend magic mushrooms too, though I generally find the experience too confusing (Yet highly interesting nevertheless) to really sit down and think about something specific.
I almost never drink coffee or tea with caffeine. Not that I'm against them, I just don't like them, I prefer herbal teas. No Mtn Dew or Cola either.
The problem is when I do need some caffeine (Monday overflow or something) if I drink a small cup of regular coffee, I get all anxious and shaky, my pulse increases and overall I feel bad. So, if I didn't get enough sleep, coffee does not make me feel better.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Just a quick note: the Christian tradition also has a history of meditation, although they tend to call it prayer. But who would "pray" as in sending a little message to God for several hours? I think it's meditations of the same sort as in India, but perhaps less formalized. I am told the pre-Christian indigenous religions of Europe had something similar as well.
Is this related to the usage of "woo" you used above?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Now you regret taking the Google job instead of the one at Microsoft!
There are all kinds of supplements that are supposed to replenish chemicals required by the brain, or stimulants or whatever. What are the students taking now-a-days to get through their studies?
I'm speaking more of its origins, but I'd like to clarify:
Meditation is a type of thought.
Thought is not necessarily religious.
Cassocks are types of clothing; altars are types of furniture.
Furniture and clothing (textiles) aren't necessarily religious either.
Is meditation religious by nature?
Historically at least, it arose from religious principles (Hinduism and others), and has been spread by the expansion of those religions.
The statement you be wanting to make is "Meditation does not require religion for its practice."
That's true, I think. Although some people tell me that it may lead to a more religious mindset.
Then again, so does good quality dope.
If you're talking about every time you program, then no, recreational drugs will not help you program, they will make things a lot worse.
However, if you're stuck, they can help to look at a problem a different way. Your mind is in a state that it isn't normally in, it's like having someone else look at your code, but without having to familiarize them with what you did or why you did things that way. Your mind will make connections it normally doesn't, true, a lot of them will be shit, but there frequently will be a solution or method that can help you past. Crick's double helix structure for DNA
Sometimes, it can make you more effective in thinking certain ways. Back when I did it, I noticed I could do crossword puzzles much faster when high. If I started one sober and couldn't finish, I usually could later when I was high. The reverse was almost never true, if I looked at one sober that I had started while high, I might fill in a few more, but not much else. I did not find any other mental tasks that were improved on a consistent basis, maybe it just stopped me from overthinking the problems. But overthinking can be a disadvantage to overcome sometimes too.
It can also help you keep you on task doing anything repetitive that doesn't require a lot of thought, but you just can't stand to do for very long while sober.
The operative word in all of this is "can", not "will". They can help sometimes when used in the correct situation, but the vast, vast majority of the time they make things worse. And sometimes when used in the correct situation, they won't help at all or make things worse.
But they definitely can.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No. Absolutely not.
Warning: Psychedelics can cause fear, nervousness and delusions in those who do not use them.
Clicked on the comments and expected to see a bunch of knuckle-dragging anti-drug circle-jerk comments, was not disappointed. Shine on, Slashdot, you shitty diamond.
In several studies, the effect of many recreational drugs is simply to inhibit the executive functional parts of the brain. In some individuals this has the potential to release bursts of creativity or insight that are being supressed by the executive function parts of the brain. In other individuals, it just releases social inhibition and sometimes even chaos. Unfortunatly, since a large part of programming is focus and high-attention span, and directing the brain to focus on tasks at hand is a large function of the executive funtional parts of the brain, this is not likely to result in a significant net benefit from programmers. Even if it were to help somehow, it is probably just as likely to steer you produce code which is stunningly creative, yet totally unrelated to the task at hand (or worse, totally underengineered useless code) mitigating the total overall benefit. This is why we probably see net benefit of recreational drugs for those endeavors that can fully embrace open-ended style creativity (writing, music, art, aesthetics, etc).
On the other hand, the jury is out on the other side of the coin with some types of drugs that work to improve focus and attention (e.g., the ADHD treatment drugs such as adderall, ritlin, etc.). Although these types of drugs aren't generally taken recreationally, they have some similarities to amphetamine like drugs, so maybe there's something there. The bottom line is that I imagine that most good programmers have already found ways to channel focus and attention towards programming and probably benefit little from whatever improvement these types of drugs might yield (except perhaps improved productivity by reducing the need for sleep/food, etc). I would suspect that these things benefit whoever is employing the programmer more than the programmer (unless, of course, the programmer is self employed).
But the benefits for programming aside, everyone (including programmers) has ways they like to blow off steam and shut off the executive side of their brain for a while to relax, recharge, and help gain insight into problems. If a programmer thinks recreational drugs are a good way to do that, so be it, but they probably shouldn't expect it to necessarily be a net help with their programming.
Once upon a time I was prescribed into addiction thanks to my ignorance and a doctor who shouldn't have been since he was nothing but an ATM for unlimited prescriptions at a phone call. I discovered something during that period though, certian stimulates when pressed to a certain threshold make you superman when it comes to focus and finding enjoyment in even the most mundane. I definitely understand the appeal of it having gone through it. HOWEVER, the downsides far outweigh it especially if you press it to the point of suffering the consequences of withdraw and all that fun stuff.
Having said that, I'm firmly against the use of stimulants and drugs such as Adderral for increased concentration where-as I use to be all for it. It changes your personality, how you act and many other things. The deeper you go the more pronounced the not-so-good side affects. Even the most discplined will abuse it when it's easy to do so just because you don't even realize it after a certain point.
Everybody codes the same and everybody has the same effect with every drug ever made..
That's why some cant code while under any influence... and some figure out problems that would take days of brainstorming @ around 7pm.
Pot takes my mind away from programming, when is time to sleep. It also makes me a lot more relaxed, and interested on the silly things my kid wants to do. After a day of blasting my brain with logic and debugging, inhaling some canabinoids through a vaporizer, helps me get my mind away from the stress from work, without the side effects of pharmaceutical headache otc medicine. I don't smoke weed when I am at work, but my best programming and design ideas come in when I am stoned. I write them down, and then review then the next day. I am one of the top contributors, get bonuses every year, and my life couldn't be happier and healthier. Also Washington state rules. Take that Oregon!
Um, have you ever walked up the stairs and outside?
From my experience, pot (and more hallucinogenic drugs) can help me look at a problem in a different way and find a solution that I otherwise may have missed. However, this doesn't usually help me at the keyboard. When I am actually writing up the code, I do my best when sober.
A neon green cross, I hear that's what the legally gray "head shops" in the US west coast are using nowadays XD
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Dope can help people with the creative processes including programming. They also can help people with disease, mental illness, social destruction, attainment of criminal charges, and an early death.
Frankly dope is not a really popular way of self destruction. As Americans we have a highly doccumented history of deaths and loss from alcohol and tobacco. Destroying yourself messing around with dope is the Johny Come Lately path to absolute misery. But if you are a young person mad as hell that you were ever born then using dope is almost the best way of telling mon and dad and most everyone else that you hate them to the depths of your soul. It sort of tells the world that the only way their kid could have done worse would be to be a child molesting mass murderer. Toke on fools!
I believe that most of my past employers would still do a drug test.
So I guess I am lacking in my potential, DAMN!
You famously recalled wrong. He did the science afterwards while sober and rejected what was a, er.. pipe dream I suppose.
oh?, I remember the 70s government warnings: the "LSD can damage your genes" "MJ can cause sterility", etc.
clearly such drugs cause delusions in non-users
I did some programming while high on weed. Or tried to. Coding a C++ app was next to impossible. I could not keep track of what the code was doing, it's dependencies, what it meant. Writing a web page in PHP was easier (quick reloads, and you always get *some* output). But I would get stuck formatting one output string for hours getting it to look 'cool'.
I was actually more successful coding in C++ on acid. It was a voxel rendering engine, so the visuals helped. And it was halfway done when I tripped, so I wasn't starting from scratch. I managed to code two hours before my brain fell apart. The next day, I found I had actually compilable code, had fixed some bugs that had been hard to track down sober, and added some (very colorful) new features. But the code was impossible to understand. It was very maths heavy, and I got no joy in trying to work out what all computations were for. I gave up on refactoring and had to start again from a pre-acid version.
It was fun tho :)
Have you? America runs the fucking world, alkie.
"Weed makes you mellow. But eventually you get paranoid."
Weed is an umbrella for different typres and has common issues due to ripeness. If people will buy whatever is given to them paranoia is likely. Some can just pick Sativa or Indica but many have anxiety issues with Sativa. Hybrids or pure Indicas can still cause anxiety problems for being harvested under ripe, which is very common. If you want to control night time sedation and day time motivation through weed you have to get gardening.
I can't code stoned. Well, I can, but not well.
I think I enjoy playing and listening to music more when stoned, but I can't say it improves performance.
The difference between those activities is that I feel a joyful enhancement (artificial and temporary -- and probably an illusion) in musical endeavors where coding while stoned introduces a feeling of tedium.
In any case, the resulting code suffers if I'm foolish enough to tackle a problem when smoking.
Sure, they help me get stoned.
I think it depends, there are several factors that you will need to consider.
For one thing, what is your tolerance level of the drug? Personally I cope well with smoking cannabis, I don't get anxious, I know exactly how it will affect my mind, i.e. I just experience it to be a release of dopamine in my head, I would rarely get f***ed up enough to become more irrational than in my daily life.
Then, you have to consider how used you are to coding what you are coding for the moment, if you've done something before, you will hardly forget what you have learned because you had a joint.
On the other hand, if you smoke too much, you will probably feel that you are easily distracted, and might have a hard time putting full focus on actual work.
Sometimes i will consider it enough to just get the code skeleton done, when i've smoked, and leave the more complex tasks for the next day, since when I do that, I will most likely dig through documentation, books, and generally focus my ass off..
Again, it depends on what you are coding, for example, I highly enjoy doing OpenGL programming while under the influence, just like i enjoy sketching and drawing, because in that case I think more about the art, and I can take my time, work with thinking visually and applying it in code.
I think that it does relieve some stress, but you should also consider when it's appropriate, if I did not work for myself, I'd NEVER walk into the office under the influence, I think it would be disrespectful to my employer, who would or would not expect me to be top notch but at least that I'm sober.
Now, it does work for me, but it's reserved mostly to when I'm doing after hours stuff, just to get it done. Would I recommend anyone to do drugs to become better programmers? NO, it does not work that way, and if you really think so, you are living an illusion.
As for the headline: Do recreational drugs help anyone? Maybe in some cases, not in others.
I was a pretty heavy recreational drug user prior to my discovering computers (I was/am a musician). I'd say that my many experiences of LSD certainly changed the way that I am creative in ways that I feel have made me a better programmer (and better musician and more interesting human). And I mean that the change was permanent and and just as relevant when sober - in fact, attempting to code while under the influence of LSD might be amusing but I doubt I'd be impressed with the results. However, there were some significant side effects to my heavy use of LSD that I wouldn't recommend (emotional/psychiatric damage that I've never really fully recovered from - and I'm not the only heavy LSD user who will say this). It's hard to say conclusively, because any alternative path for my particular brain is purely hypothetical, but if I had a time machine, I'd go back and tell my younger self to experiment with hallucinogens but dial it way back before getting anywhere close to the level of use that I got to, and if I didn't think my argument was convincing, I'd tell myself not to bother at all. Basically, I had years of issue-free use of LSD, but once I finally had a really nasty experience I never really got over it. If I felt like you could reliably get the early experiences with a guarantee of avoiding the latter, then I'd be a big proponent of it, but there are no such guarantees and every dose is a risk - though a large part of the risk is your emotional well-being at the time you take the dose. The benefits of LSD were huge, and I think worth the risk of trying it a few times, given the odds (I probably took it 300 times before having a negative experience). But so was the eventual downside and I wish I'd stopped using it after the first 20-30 times, which is when most of the long-term benefit was acquired.
As for weed - I certainly wouldn't try to code high. I still smoke on very rare occasions (once or twice a year) and I appreciate that I might have a deep thought or two about a particular algorithmic problem that happens to be percolating in my head at the time, but there's no way any code I wrote under the influence would be worth a damn. If it helps you relax and helps you have a creative life away from your computer during your off-hours, then it's a good thing, just as going out for a beer with friends might be. If you are sitting around high, getting fat, and playing video games when you aren't working, then it's likely not a helpful presence in your life.
In short - just about anything in moderation can have its benefits and just about anything done to excess will be damaging. Be smart, and listen to the people that love you and you'll probably find a nice balance.
Drugs have killed people in my family. Illicit drugs reduce your life expentancy. FACT.
If your a shitty coder when sober, your going to be a shitty coder while stoned too.
If your a good coder when sober, your going to be a good coder while stoned too.
It really doesn't have any noticeable impact on the code.
However I don't smoke until I'm blazed out of my mind like I see so many people do, I find it much more enjoyable to just get a decent buzz going and pace myself with to sustain the buzz.
Alcohol however is a whole other story, had to encrypt my project folders with a long enough encryption key that I stand no chance of decrypting it while drunk.
I find Modafinal to be effective when I have to work with little sleep or need that extra boost. I wouldn't class it as recreational though. Anyone else find this when coding?
Coding while high is stupid. Clouded & foggy thoughts make it difficult to focus on the concrete aspects of writing code.
On the other hand, thinking about coding while high is incredibly relaxing. A totally different mindset that can lead to clever solutions... that are usually implemented the next morning.
If nothing else, it's incredibly effective at removing stress at night.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Having done both pot and LSD among others I can say that they definitely don't help with programming. You might thing they're helping while you're high, but when you sober up and get down to debugging the godawful mess of code you wrote you'll know better. Adderall type drugs might be the exception, but I never tried those.
OK, this guy was widely respected as one of the top hackers of the world. Smoked a lot of pot for some time but later abstained and he remained on top of the game. But he died at the age of 54 because of a haemorrhage of the stomach. To counter the effects of previous marijuana use he had to take quite some prescription drugs that in turn damaged his stomach. A good coder gets his kicks of writing good code I believe.
I sometimes use Modafinal when I'm working late or need an extra boost. To me it's much more noticeable than caffeine; it keeps me concentrating all day and doesn't make me jittery. Not recreational though. Anyone else it whilst coding?
At least in the case of LSD, there is research suggesting that the answer is indeed yes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelics_in_problem-solving_experiment
More research needs to be done, of course. But I'm afraid that's very difficult in today's absurd political environment.
That's what a drug is. That's practically the definition of the word. Every drug improves something -- almost always by inhibiting something else. Welcome to focus. If you allow that focus to flourish, you'll reap the benefits.
Whether or not that inhibition is detrimental, short-term or long-term, is the value proposition.
It helps me not burn down the customers building during onsites.
I am not getting it.
You say you are a top contributor at work, get bonuses and could not be happier, yet to do pot because of the stress?
And you do that in the evening to get away from work, yet you keep thinking about programming, and write the ideas down?
Sounds contradictory to me. Are you stoned now?
I don't think the idea is to code while high, but more to smoke a joint after work to help you get your mind off of things. It's more the lingering effects during the next workday that are what possibly help with the coding, not the active effects of being high -while- coding.
Welcome our red-pill popping overlords.
Free your mind.
How about some non-anecdotal evidence from a scientist?
Mediation does things to your brain that make you realize certain things.
The fallacy is assuming that the only path to these realizations comes through meditation.
(I have no qualms with people who choose to meditate so I'm not going to sneak anti-meditative sentiment in here.)
If you learn to do drugs or, for those with aversion to the negative publicity associate with drugs, to "edit your thought patterns," you'll get everything you could from meditation.
This isn't an anti-mediation argument; that's for someone else's thread. It's an argument against assuming meditation can give you something that can't get another way.
If the potential is within the mind, clearly it's the important element, not the meditation.
I did my entire electrical and electronic degree coursework while stoned, it was especially useful for the maths part, which I couldn't get my head round whilst sober. For some reason it let me think about such abstract concepts in a different way. I would then make copious notes to help me when I came back to it the next day, and I came out of it with a first class degree. On the other hand, I write music and it strangely does not help in a creative way. YMMV!
365 X $100 > $32K hmmmm.... Let me offer some free accounting advice - you might want to find a better-paying job or a cheaper "habit". Could I recommend fishing, jogging, or playing video games? All much, much more in line with your current stated income.
I find I'm much more productive in many ways when coding while high. Mainly in that I enjoy it and it helps me focus on the work for absurdly long periods of time. Sometimes I find myself stressed out and getting sick of programming, needing a break, so I take a break and smoke a bowl. Usually after about two or three hits I find I'm really excited about what I'm doing again, and instead of continuing my break I just get back at it for another few hours... and so on until I fall asleep. I do find my focus is better too - my mind tends to wander more when I'm not high and I get more distracted by RSS feeds and slashdot and such. Then again I've been smoking heavily every day for 14 years. When I was in high school I remember that getting high would make it hard to pass tests and such, but at this point I feel more competent doing such things high than not, honestly. I'm not really sure if this is a good thing or not.
That aside I'm a horrible example in most other respects. College dropout, unemployed, and currently working on my own projects with the hope of eventually making it big (if not I go back to doing freelance stuff). The reasons I did poorly in college were more due to drinking all the time and never going to class, though - also I'm an asocial recluse, pretty much. Blame alcohol and my own bad decisions for that, not the weed. In my opinion it can help make working long hours more desirable, especially if you love what you're doing and love doing it high. My recommendation would be moderation and good judgment, but if you're used to getting stoned all the time, it shouldn't seriously interfere with your work. Most of my best ideas (the ones I'm now turning into tens of thousands of lines of code out of my apartment) occurred while smoking weed.
I've considered quitting because I'm worried what the long term effects on my cognitive abilities will be as I get older (not to mention lung cancer), but I'm not entirely sure it won't limit my creativity and productivity as well.
The last time I was sitting at my computer and smoked some pot, I decided it would be a good idea to reencrypt the porn collection with a new password. Later, I encountered insurmountable evidence that pot can screw with your short term memory. I lost a lot of good porn to pot.
This post was removed due to Dice content standards violations.
Please tell me this is a joke and not censorship.
Last I checked the ONLY msg ever removed from /. other than technical glitches was a Scientology-related posts removed due to legal threats.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> Illicit drugs reduce your life expentancy.
Some of them, perhaps. As do many licit drugs. I fail to see why you make the licit/illicit distinction, as it is not the legal status of a drug that determines its harmfulness (except perhaps when it lands you in prison...). How about "Some recreational drugs reduce life expectancy, in particular those that are (for that reason) illegal.
> FACT.
Not really.
I would trust John Markoff with a accurate, and fair assessment of people in the computer industry.
I would also like to give him money.
Ketamine helped create cyberpunk. My vote's on yes.
(2,3-Benzopyrrole)
Marijuana most certainly helps. Well, it helps me, but with marijuana one thing is for sure: everybody reacts differently to it. So YMMV tremendously.
It typically has two effects. The first is to help focusing, enabling absorbing much more information into your brain than you typically manage. This helps you through the boring parts (think: endless debug sessions or typing that javadoc), the typical project-blockers which are avoided by procrastinating. It also helps thinking on a more abstract level, working on the bigger picture.
The second effect is that it can trigger a certain kind of creativity, coming up with solutions that you'd otherwise simply not have thought of, the kind of solutions that may sometimes pop into your head while taking a shower after a good nights sleeps.
Note that - in my case - it typically does not negatively affect code quality at all; my code is pristine whether I'm stoned or not. (And I'm considered one of the most horribly code-quality nazis by most of my colleagues so I think I can judge on that;-)).
While such effects do occur quite often, you cannot rely on it; sometimes it just does not happen. Another problem is that using recreational drugs in order to achieve a specific outcome other than recreation-thing itself is guaranteed to end in a bad habit that can quite easily develop into a dependence on marijuana, which can be quite difficult to get rid of. Note that in many people marijuana does trigger nasty symptoms such as an irregular hearthbeat, low bloodpressure (fainting), stomach complaints as well as
withdrawal symptoms ranging from not being able to sleep at all to being unimaginable nervous to actual physical symptoms such as sweating profusely. While I no longer am addicted, I have been for several years and it literally took me years to get rid of that. I have found it much easier to quit smoking tobacco than to quit smoking my daily joint. BE CAREFUL.
Therefore I suggest not to use marijuana at all and if you do, do it at most once a week and do it for recreational purposes ONLY. For me, that advice came a bit too late, but I'm absolutely convinced that smoking weed has increased my programming productivity at home tremendously and has helped me come up with some of the best ideas I've ever had, thereby having a hugely positive effect on my professional career as well.
Nevertheless: just don't do it.
0x or or snor perron?!
Whatever you need to sleep at night, eurotrash alkie.
The amount of uninformed comments on here are astounding. I'll ask all of you brainiacs one question, does a drug affect all people the same way?
I'll answer it for you, no. Which is why there are 20 different types of anti depressant pills for example.
To all of you who are trying to make out that everyone who uses drugs turns into a blathering idiot, I'd like to ask if that applies to Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud? Both huge cocaine users, just one example of many.
Just because none of you can handle or because of genetic makeup don't experience what others experience, doesnt mean everyone turns into you when using.
Im dutch, some drugs is legal to use here, and i have never heard of this as being relevant to (software) engineers. In my experience we use less drugs, and if we use it (or alcohol) we close in on the stereotype "normal" person.. or so I heard.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
I use racetams like aniracetam and/or piracetam. I also favor eugeroics like Adrafinil. While not miracles, both of these are extremely helpful in enhancing memory and attention. Caffeine too, is a perennial favorite. I've also had good experiences with Bacopa, but you take it the night before, not during the day when you're programming. All legal and available on Ebay too. Bonus!
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Please keep on feeling superior. While you are working 60 hours a week all year long, deep in debt, and being herded by overly aggressive police officers. In constant fear of getting something unfortunate happen to you in which case you are screwed big time. Meanwhile, us commie-euro-trashions will stick up another reefer, drink some wine and work only 36 hours. And feel free, anything can happen and we're covered. No fear.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s "After 1971 he also took amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month.[34] Erds won the bet, but complained that during his abstinence mathematics had been set back by a month: "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper." After he won the bet, he promptly resumed his amphetamine use."
Subject says it all.
If it's good enough for the Air Force to give to pilots, it's good enough for you!
Psychedelics and cannabis can help with the conceptual part of designing software, but they make it more difficult to write actual code and can make it more buggy. I find that a small amount of weed can help me focus for a couple of hours before it makes me groggy. Also, microdosing LSD - taking just enough to get the stimulating, creative, awareness-expanding, uplifting effects but not enough for the reality distortion and motor impairment - shows promising signs as a nootropic. I would recommend looking into LSD microdosing if you're really curious about how recreational drugs could be used beneficially for intellectual purposes. I've never used LSD explicitly for problem solving, but all kinds of unique ideas come to me spontaneously, and there have been many times while tripping that I've viewed the world in an objected-oriented way for example thinking about each person as a separate implementation of an abstract Person class along with implementing interfaces for each role they perform in society as a way of conceptualizing the way unique people can all fit into predefined roles in society. Most of the realizations on psychedelics are hard to describe to others, but that's mostly because of how complex and nuanced (and many times, personal) the realizations are. It would be like trying to explain how some 100,000 line system you wrote works to someone; You understand it conceptually in your head, but putting it into words so a lay person can understand the inner workings is all but impossible.
It's not that recreational drugs help the actual act of writing code, but they can be greatly beneficial to the conceptual design process.
Then there's stimulants like adderall and (obviously) caffeine. And the fact that smoking weed after work can be an effective means of preventing burn out.
In the end, I think it mostly varies from person to person. What drugs they're used to, how their mind naturally works, what kind of work they do, what kind of effects the want, etc.
Forget "recreational" drugs, I want to code.
How well do programmers perform while taking Provigil?
If there is one, I don't know what it is. Alchohol makes me feel generally lousy. Tobacco can be fun at a party but fuzzes my brain for anything requiring concentration. I'm addicted to caffeine, but if I get the level wrong, it fuzzes my brain. BTW, I have CFIDS, so I'm not exactly starting out in a good place, and basically everything makes me worse. Even too much sugar! Energy drinks fall flat for me because the sugar cancels out the other effects. Especially when it's HFCS, which makes me really tired; cane sugar causes me less trouble. Taurine and B vitamine are fine, but carnitine gives me headaches.
I have these multivitamins that are high in B's, particularly niacin, and those are the only things I've tried that have a clear short-term positive effect on my concentration.
I don't know why the examples are pot and LCD, that's pretty silly. If you want to talk about drugs that helps one do math-intensive activities the conversation should be about Aderall and Ritalin and stuff like that. Meth perhaps (though I've never tried that one, so I can't comment on it).
One time in grade school I was still tripping on acid from the night before and the teacher asked me a simple geometry question that I normally would have been able to do in my head. I started writing out equations and pretty soon I filled the page and none of it made a damn bit of sense. The only thing that acid ever made me better at was playing guitar and video games (fun trip: play Killer 7 on acid).
And pot. . . it seriously hinders my ability to read and do math. It makes me way too forgetful and it seems like it takes way more mental energy than normal to do the same things. Pot helps one to excel at guitar and video games or any other task where one is mindlessly focussed on a single activity. Playing around with differential equations. . .not so much. I haven't done any programming in a long time but it's all math, so I'm sure pot would hinder me in the same way as doing other mathematical activities.
Drugs can increase performance in two regions in the coding world: long monotonous tasks that just aren't fun to do &... critical thinking. Some bugs / challenges require you to really descend into the code, far more than is normal for most people's cognition and some drugs take you there. Most don't, they're designed to allow people to have fun / forget their lives or something, not work. On general tasks though, like say adding a slew of textboxes and then wiring them up to data points, it requires just enough focus to not be monotonous, but not enough where you can focus in on it and work, you're constantly changing gears. All in all, I'd have to say they're counter-productive on a large scale, but have probably led to some coding gems sprinkled here and there in the coding world.
Out of scope: out-of-the-box thinking & it's effects on coding
I shit on your little third world eurotrash countries where you have no freedom and censorship is the norm. You know that computer you use to read Slashdot? Invented by Americans. In all of the millennia of your pathetic country's existence, you couldn't match what we Americans were able to create in only two hundred years.
Stay drunk, alkie.
The one drug that I can't program on is pot. But it seems to be one of the safest, fukk your ass up drugs out there... And it helps me sleep.
You end up with the best, most usable, most efficient logging class that the world has ever known, before which log4net can only cry with jealousy. However, your project doesnt depend on having good logging.... ooops!
Programming has creative elements. When I was younger, I found pot to be helpful during the design phase, but absolutely counterproductive during the debugging phase.
After we spent years wondering why Vista was such a POS, now we find out Redmond was stoned out of their redwoods.
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
there are just as many of us who see recreational drug use for the destructive, distracting habit it is.
What if I say "there are just as many of us who see religion for the destructive, distracting habit it is."
Would that be trolling? Why, why not?
Try repeating the above to someone who needs psychiatric medication to function normally or to keep symptoms down to manageable levels. How would you like someone with schizophrenia to try meditating their problems away?
Not all brains are created equal.
Palm trees and 8
Drugs have helped my career tremendously. I may not be the best developer, but I've been promoted beyond all of my hung-over, buzzed, and fried co-workers.
I simply detest the stupidity of people who equal "a coming of age' with a truism. There is no correlation between drugs and programming well, I've seen fellow trippers and their work and I've fired a few once I found the reason for the crap code that they wrote.
Yes, I imagine they all do, but for different effects. Someone who plays with poppy tea will adopt a style different from someone who drops acid. Same for ketamine.
The bigger problem you are going to run into is the inability of society to tolerate that kind of evolution. See, it may take 5 trips to level up a programmer from standard to 'I understand how to implement an incredible Visitor pattern,' all while your boss, who has never programmed in his life and thinks drugs are of the devil, is going to be messing with you (either harshing your buzz / creating a bad trip, or if it's done off-hours, he will not be appreciate of the changes ("This new pattern, while awesome, differs from the established way of doing things, and is giving your teenage replacements a mind-fuck"). External forces can and will influence the effects of a trip, as can be seen when the drug-taker is a low-class, middle-class, or upper-class individual. Low-class it can end very badly, and I understand typically does. Middle-class it's hard to tell. Upper-class, especially among artists and musicians, can do some incredible stuff. But then, their fields tolerate that just fine, while programming is slowly becoming intolerant of that (lower salaries, plus bosses care more than you are sitting at a desk, day-dreaming, than writing something incredible at home; it is, no doubt, the primary difference between the big 'gains' we were seeing in the programming sector a decade or two ago, and now, where the biggest thing to come out of tech recently was Windows 8 and FailBook's IPO).
I am John Hurt.
What are the students taking now-a-days to get through their studies?
The same things they were taking in the 90s, 80s, 70s, etc.: caffeine, nicotine, and amphetamines.
Palm trees and 8
Well said. This is how I feel about several social issues.
So, do they now throw out the THC part of the urine tests?
Back in the 80's I was attending a university and programming in Fortran (and regularly smoking pot). Unfortunately I did something stupid that resulted in me spending 3 weeks as the guest of the government (ie: I spend 3 weeks in jail) So this particular jail (or at least the section that I was in) had a chess board. And there were a number of good players. I had learned to play chess as a kid, but I never got particularly good. I had been smoking right up to day I went to court so when I landed in cells I was in what I felt was my usual working mental condition. After a few days I started playing chess (since there wasn't much else to do) and I played badly. However I noticed as the days passed by I was getting better. After 2 weeks I really was noticing that my game had improved dramatically and I was feeling like my thinking was much clearer. By the end of my time I was the top player in the place. Once I got out I of course went back to smoking but almost immediately I felt my thinking becoming muddied. I started looking around and I could see that many people that were regular smokers had little or no ambition and were content to simply drift along in life. I have not smoked in many years and for me it was the right thing to do. The other thing that is problematic is how much crime has become centered around the production and distribution of pot. Just like the days of prohibition, easy money has created gangs that only exist because of the easy money generated by the drug trade. Legalizing and controlling the production and distribution of drugs by the government (as is done with alcohol since the end of prohibition) is a way to remove the funding that gangs depend on. The increase in revenue generated by the taxation of pot sales combined with the savings from no longer having to lock up offenders would make a huge difference to how policing would be done. I see that today's social problems centered on pot use has many parallels with the prohibition era. And like that era, the solution was to legitimize and regulate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
This article is about the best example of Betteridges law that I've ever seen.
Generally, drugs = bad. You can do without them, and better, and even without common pills. The hippies were ofcourse highly inspired by LSD. But that is not the main element. Religion is. Esoteric religion. And THAT, can help you think better, have a clearer mind, a more content life. And nothing is better than a positive outlook on life, and honestly praising God.
For a drugless, and clear understanding of religion, please also look at http://www.paradoxuncreated.com
Peace Be With You.
'Nuff said.
While I agree that you shouldn't mod GP down because of disagreeing...I do believe GP should be modded down. He uses inflammatory and trolling language.
No, he should be modded down because his comment was the fucking idiotic ravings of a lunatic ;-)
THE CLOUD
Your code is broken.
Your code on drugs is sufficiently obfuscated that I don't really care to determine if it's broken or not. Much better, indeed!
Clearly, you need to write mroe code on drugs.
Caffeine is NOT a recreational drug; it is a necessity of life.
Cheers,
Dave
P.S. Interesting obervation in your sig. I wonder if Douglas Adams realized that when he came up with 42.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I worked at a place that had a beer fridge. 4:30 pm was unofficially known as beer:30. Can't say much one way or the other about any code that got written late in the day. The good developers wrote good code regardless of whether or not they had had a beer. I can say that morale and productivity both took a hit when the place went "corporate" and no longer stocked the beer fridge.
Some things are counterintuitive. Supposedly the beer should have been a hit on productivity. Instead, everyone relaxed and talked and worked out dependencies and interactions along with the usual BSing. End result was a better product.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
cat > main.c << EOF
/dev/null
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void) {
printf("%d\n", unix);
return 0;
}
EOF
make main
cc main.c -o main
./main
1
'unix' is simply one of the symbols defined by the compiler.
use this command to show all of them:
gcc -dM -E - <
Have a couple of drinks and get a good buzz (not drunk), and all brain lock goes away! When at home I code at my best with a good buzz - one highball glass of Crown Royal with ice always does the trick! Who needs pot or LSD - legal stuff works great.
The Truth is a Virus!!!
And some people will have vile violent reactions without taking any drugs whatsoever.
Did anyone say that it was "the only path"? I may have missed that comment.
Odd that you mention "logical fallacy" when talking about the mind, and then assume that meditation can work outside the bounds of the mind - from within which the meditating is being accomplished.
There are many, many potentials which require a spark to ignite the "important element". For you, perhaps that was your dedication to meditation, and perhaps that will get you as far in developing your Self and your Being as you can possibly get in this world. Congrats on having the opportunities, discipline, time, and teachers for that.
Not so for others.
8-PP
Long ago, I had experience of a roommate at CalTech. D would lay out a pill before he went to sleep. He set his alarm to go off at 5am. He dropped the pill at 5, and went back to sleep. The pill was, in rotation to prevent habituation, LSD, pscilocybin, or mescaline. About an hour after his 5am alarm, he'd be awakened by the drug's actions and go about his day. He graduated with a 4.3 (A+). I'm not sure I ever saw him straight. I never worked out (nor did he offer any definitive comment on the matter) whether he was so damned smart because of, or in spite of, his selfie-pharm regimen, but whatever, he was able to perform at the highest level in one of the most demanding academic environments around.
Doing any sort of real programming sort of gets me high on it's own - don't need pot.
But the drudgery that actually pays most of the bills (another stinkin form?) is far more tolerable with a little puff.
I smoked my way through my career, and now I regret it mightily. Sure it was relaxing at the time, but I have to admit that there was a complexity level I could not get past while stoned. Windows programming for instance. I just couldn't keep it together in Visual Studio if stoned. I would hit the wrong key and not be able to back up. I would also make subtle errors that were difficult to unwind later. Some people like to drink some beer and code freely (as in free like in beer), and I think that is prone to the same trouble. My truth is that the more sober and focused you are, the higher the quality of the work. I believe it is a fallacy that an American programmer on drugs is smarter than some foreigner who is motivated and sober. I haven't smoked in six years, but I think my colleagues are convinced I am a stoner and I don't get job offers any more. I guess there are plenty of clean and sober engineers to choose from, and being a stoner doesn't help your competitiveness.
Caffeine has little effect on many people (me included). I can drink a cup of strong coffee and go to sleep 30 mins later just fine. I've once accidentally conditioned myself to expect sleep after drinking coffee by drinking a cup each night before bed. So for a few weeks afterwards I was becoming very sleepy after drinking a cup of coffee during day.
And no, I don't have caffeine dependency - I can live (and often do) without coffee for months just fine.
Smoking pot helps you to think that super gluing your 2 year old's hand to the wall and beating her will help her to be potty trained.
"Jocelyn suffered bleeding in her brain, a fractured rib, multiple bruises and bite marks, and was in a coma for a couple of days. Some skin had been torn off her hands, where doctors also found glue residue and white paint chips from the apartment wall, witnesses testified."
"Escalona admitted to using drugs since the age of 13, smoking marijuana while she was pregnant, and doing drugs and drinking while out on bond for a prior felony charge."
http://abcnews.go.com/US/texas-mom-glued-daughters-hands-wall-99-years/story?id=17436643#.UJxdQ04r1Nc
"Despite what she described as problems paying rent and other bills, Escalona admitted she was using marijuana about twice a day in the time before she attacked Jocelyn."
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/10/11/texas-mother-who-glued-her-toddler-daughter-hands-faces-sentencing-for-felony/#ixzz2Bgb5Ch3C
I do not think that the pot helped her decision making.
Ballmer Peak
xkcd.com/323/
there are just as many of us who see recreational drug use for the ... distracting habit it is.
What is wrong with a distracting habit? I watch movies to distract myself from the boredom and suffering of life; so what?
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
It's a half-decent way to extract the LSA. Keeping the water cold and out of the light is probably a good idea. Using alcohol instead of water might work even better.
The best I've ever felt was mixing shrooms and LSA. No trip per se, but an incredible feeling of happiness, power, and enlightenment.
Erowid has pretty good information about LSA extraction. You're not really supposed to swallow the seeds; grinding them up and then putting them in a teabag and sucking on that for a half hour is probably good.
That get out of jail is only if you are not caught by the FEDERAL law enforcement.
They've identified these receptors in the brain that activate specific circuits. And you know how they say that we can only access twenty percent of our brain? Well, what this does, it lets you access all of it.
Marijuana and LSD are excellent. If they don't help with programming, f*** programming.
Serious, that dude was on all sorts of interesting stuff, and was coding perfect assembly. Then again, he's burnt out more brain cells than most people possess, so maybe he could afford to do that...
And we have several hundred years of history, compromising some of our greatest bodies of work, also done while under the influence, that help reiterate that point.
You don't say? I'd agree that being under the influence would compromise any body of work, large or small.
Mj is an herb not a drug
caffeine is a drug ,
tylenol is a drug
generally speaking you the difference here is most things that you OD on will or can kill you MJ you either smoke yourself straight or sick i.e puking but you dont die unlesss you were able to smoke several lbs all at once very fast or were in a hermetically sealed room and sufficiently used up enough O2 the MJ itself will not kill you or turn you into a veggie
also depending on studies they've found that people in routine monotonous work can and do perform better if stoned because the work is so simple they can be more meditative compared to a person that is stuck and is thinking about all the ills of their life lol mj can make ya content on the bottom of the totem pole ... the only true way to test this is with a mutiple sets of twin programmers of both genders have a control group and a stoned group and compare and not only compare that but swap the roles and give sufficient time for both to truely be cleaned out ---- Super High Me was not a proper scientitic method as it takes for a regular user about 35-45 days (body fat content/weight being a factor) and thusly to truely prune the measure wait at least 2-3months after that to allow his body chem to really balance out and then monitor his sober state then monitor him after resuming inhalation of cannabis --- but dude im more interested in the industrial uses honestly textiles/paper/biofuels/fabric and mooooorrreeee can we say instant multi-state instant cash crop and the air in LA would prolly be clear in no time
Does alcohol help you driving better?
Why suffer when it's so easy to ramp down? Just drink 3/4 caf for a week, 1/2 caf the next, 1/4 caf the last. Decaf is your friend. No headaches.
obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/323/
For somebody who use stimulants its L-DOPA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-DOPA - amino acid precursor to dopamine.
Glad to hear the simple facts are so cut and dried. For starters, not enough people are fully sober (alcohol and drug free) their entire lives for us to make a fair comparison as to how differently those people turn out. I suspect you'd have to look at earlier eras to get some data on societies with high levels of abstinence- like late 1890s Britain or 1950s USA- and I hypothesize that abstinence might have something to do with the energy of those times.
Regardless, we're certainly not doing just fine. We are living in a crisis of indifference- more or less disinterested in pursuing the big problems- global warming, social justice, resource sustainability, moving into space as a frontier... On the whole we're more ignorant, more obnoxious, less disciplined, and less effective than our predecessors of 50 years ago- and technology is the only thing propping up the whole tottering system so we can pretend that our nice cars and clothes prove how great we are.
A nation of newspaper readers has shifted to a nation that lives on propaganda and marketing. What happened to duty, honor, social good, service, civic pride, and real community? I bet most under 20s today couldn't even define alot of those terms. We're not even respecting the hard-won protections of our constitution anymore, which was for so long a source of pride for Americans. Routine spying, state murder and torture are standard procedure and nobody cares enough to stop it or even hardly bring it up.
And you want to tell me this has nothing to do with the fact that the number one pasttime of (as you pointed out, nearly all) American adults, the thing they rush home in the evening to do, is drugs (including alcohol and prescriptions)? And you want to tell me that happiness found in a bottle or a pipe doesn't displace the much subtler and harder won pleasures of accomplishing things through hard work, of service to others, of making the world a better place? The arguments that people have always been the same is absurd. Just look at the different generations, groups, cultures all around us and you see very different ethics and very different lives lived. If people would stay sober and focused on things that are real, instead of TV fantasy and chemistry, they'd have less need for such rationalizations and excuses.
And it won't matter much how we code when we wake up in a dystopian society because everybody preferred to get high and avoid the problems rather than develop themselves as people, to be able to wield the clear-minded discipline and self-knowledge that makes sacrifice and service to the greater good not just a bunch of talk or something to be written off, but an emotional and rational priority.
it your diet was intentionally depleted of tryptophan, or imbalanced, could you think your way out of that? what about if you were exposed to methyl-mercury or cadmium would you be able to just resist the aggressive tendencies those heavy metals are known to cause.
because the amount of tryptophan that crosses the BBB is a function of the ratio of tryp: LNAA (large neutral aminoacids), so that eating too much protein can similarly deplete your brain of tryptophan the essential building block of a series of neurotransmitters, serotonin, n-acetyl-serotonin, melatonin, mexamine, and theoretically dmt. some of these are antioxidants as well as hormones and neurotransmitters. in fact melatonin specifically concentrates in the CSF, nucleous and mitochondria where it plays an important role protecting DNA and mitochondrial DNA.
melatonin is probably the most potent and effective antioxidant that exists and we produce it while we sleep. long term administration to various mammals has been shown in extend their lifespan by 20%.
Melatonin is unlike most antioxidants that exist in two states, oxidised and reduced. when they lose an electron to stabilise another free radical they become toxic themselves. Linus paulings wife died of stomach cancer from taking mega doses of vitC because in large doses the amount on the other side of the equilibrium becomes significant and it does more harm than good. Melatonin is unlike most other antioxidants in that it can undergo a cascade and neutralise over 4 other toxic molecules or one or two very potent toxins without becoming toxic itself. together with glutathione it is one of the most important antioxidants in the human body, and tends to work better with buffering that occurs when all the naturally present antioxidiants are available including vit E and C.
so when you are depleted of tryptophan and your body cannot produce sufficient serotonin, NAS and melatonin you become depressed but before you become totally depressed you develop certain psychological features. interestingly one is that you lose the ability to perform reversal learning effectively. which is where after being trained for one conditioned response the meaning of the signal is reversed and animals depleted of tryptophan and therefore serotonin exhibit a deficit in relearning the new meaning.
Drugs are bad, m'kay?
Besides, if we're making up hypotheses, maybe Cthulhu mugs and posters also actually make programmers more motivated to finish the project before Great Cthulhu rises from R'lyeh to kill us all with tentacles. See, it's not just coincidence that so many of us nerds are cultists of the Great Old Ones. What? Are you saying it's just me? ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Marijuana abuse certainly helps increase computer programmers' productivity! Marijuana abuse causes schizophrenia or split-personality mental disorder, therefore a single on-pot programmer will be able to do the work of at least two non-smokers, possibly four or even five, provided each personality fragment in him can use a single limb to type on a separate keyboard, plus dictation via voice control.
That is, before police arrive to take away the employee in handcuffs for murder. You see, schizos (a.k.a. psychopatologic serial killers) are not exactly peaceful guys and have a tendency to chop up wife between the beta and RC development stage of their new file systems...
Of course, schizo may try to play the insanity defence gambit, claimining nobody knows which personality fragment in him is responsible for the murder, but we all know Dirty Harry's answer to such cowardice!
I have been a heavy marijuana user for 2 years, while doing research in theoretical computer science in Amsterdam. That helped thinking a damn lot. I was creative and able to think maths "out of the box" as they say. I was smoking pot only in the evening after work, but a lot of it. I have to say, I miss it, but I would NOT do it again. I was doing home and work, and nothing else. Because the thing called me back home as soon as I got out of work. And I know quite a bunch of people with the same problem. But apart from that, yes it helped doing theorems and proofs. And by the "Curry-Howard correspondence" (google for it!) this is the same thing as coding.
Follow the George Carlin mantra: Write stoned, edit sober. Maybe for you that means pseudocode stoned, or flowchart, or whatever you do to organize ahead of time. But don't forget to give anything you do the critical, detail-oriented sober eye as well before inflicting it on anyone else. For every great idea you get on drugs, there are at least three times as many bad ones you'd be better off leaving behind.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
It's like getting a second opinion from yourself. When I was a web developer, often I would lay the framework for my code at the office and do the rest from home while I smoked up. My boss was well aware of how the magic happened; he even hooked me up a few times when I was dry. He had noticed my performance was lacking, and made a joke about it during a cigarette break. He was the same way, though.
Glad to see some serious discussion on this.
I have known quite a few long-term active users of weed and I've seen pretty clear negative effects in everyone I would label such (1-3 times a month isn't yet active in this context). I don't think that every one of them fully realized/understood these negative effects though their spouses and those friends who weren't regular users certainly did. So, if your wife/girlfriend/husband/boyfriend says "Oh, AC has been smoking daily for years and there are no negative effects as far as I can see!", great. But I won't take your word for it, even if you believe in what you say yourself.
Marijuana: Yes for creativity, and envisioning the end product. No for multitasking or tedious tasks. 20 years of experience.
I smoke weed whenever I have it (~70% of the time) and have used lsd occassionaly (and will again). My job is nuclear physics research with a healthy side of web-application development. Smoking and programming work marvelously to ease anxiety, allow creative thought, and to focus my otherwise ADD-like attention.
WHat a ridiculous question.. Of course they do... In the beginning.. Once you reach a level of "state dependance" however, where you can't do it without, things change.. Programming on LSD though? Has anyone even *tried* it?
As a Chip Musician and Pixel Artist (I code a bit too) I would say weed is beneficial for creative applications whereas caffine is good for concentration and solving logic problems. I'm pretty sure I have ADD, too, so that could be why these particular substances help me in certain situations. I feel like weed lets all the ideas swim together in my head whereas caffine puts up the walls and lets me focus on logic problems and technical things. I'm sure different brain chemicals combinations would produce different results, though. For example: my girlfriend (who has OCD) does not mix well with pot (makes her crazy), but she is mega addicted to caffine (and gets very chatty). I've observed that i dont really see the speedy affects of caffine - i mostly feel some increased concentration. Weed is also a very good anti-stress drug for me. I am interested in the legalization of weed because i want more research done on the drug. I want to know the actual side effects etc, and if its legalized, then there will be better research. I'd like to know and understand the potential side effects instead of wondering and speculating with my doctor.
Also, >>> Carl Sagan smoked weed and wrote many articles about it under the pen name Mr. X.
No but it makes for interesting syntax. Sendmail was written when LSD was popular and this is NOT a coincidence!
Cars have killed people in my family. Riding in cars reduces your life expentancy (sic). FACT.
We should make riding in cars illegal.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
You'll be happy to know the cannacode.com domain is available, should someone wanna make that happen.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
But correlation is not causation, and "personal testimonials (n=1)" are not "evidence-based analysis (n>>1)". Try looking at a few GOOD clinical trials and see what you think then.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
They're all so obviously high on aderall.
programming while stoned and after being stoned is nothing new. It's been going on for decades and apparently still going on, unlike the companies where this was commonplace decades ago. Those failed long ago when they could not deliver product that was reliable or sometimes even product that actually worked.
Programming is totally unforgiving of mistakes. Anything that impacts a programmer's mental state has a seriously negative effect on projects. That not only includes drugs and alcohol, but it also includes fatigue. Programming while stoned or drunk causes one to produce what they think is the neatest niftiest code - until they sober up and cannot figure out what it was even supposed to do, forget about whether it might actually work to perform the task. Programming with a hang-over or with drugs still in the system simply reduces one's capacity to function for hours or in some cases, days.
Fatigue is a little less of a disaster. It usually comes about as one attempts to wrap something up, by working long hours. What happens here is typically, one or more mistakes get inserted into the code and the time to find and remove those mistakes adds several times more days of hard work than were saved by spending that extra time working weekends and/or eveinings to get the job done earlier. It's a simple thing that the further one goes in a project, the more difficult and time consuming the discovery and repair of any error tends to be. Or put another way, it's far quicker to finish a project with fewer bugs
I can easily get to stoned to program but if I am fatigued a cup of coffee and a few hits off a joint will get my gear moving and I can be very productive and creative but if I smoke the whole joint or if I have been smoking chronically my coding goes to shit. I mean I have coded enough and patterns are ingrained enought that I can do it but I am slow and the code is poor quality. Now for endurance physical activities or sports I think pot is a performance enhancer. As a cyclist I can cycle to the point of failure smoke a joint and its like popeye got his spinach.
If you want to take a dopamine precursor, take L-tyrosine, which the brain converts into L-DOPA. L-tyrosine is available in Vitamin Shoppes and General Nutrition stores [USA]. Taking L-DOPA directly is not recommended; it's a pharmaceutical used to treat Parkinson's disease, and not very well at that, as it has unfortunate side effects, such as hyperdopaminergia.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
is that how Jeff Minter does it? I dont know how that would work really but a spliff can help you get focused into something when it's really interesting, making the rest of the world disappear ... i wouldnt advise it to people who arent used to it though. I've known plenty of people who wouldnt start their working day without a smoke. Never saw any accidents coming from that, time passes by more quickly as well.
Sounds like a nice experimen to try. Since it's being legalised in places in the states, have a go, by all means, have a go at it lol, don't forget to film it.
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
I don't have a poblem with marijuana being legallized
While the GP may sound contradictory (eg. pot takes his/her mind from programming yet gets algorithmically creative when high), I experience the exact same thing. I have developed in-house apps for businesses using Java and smoking cannabis got me through some of the difficult bits and even IMO made the overall program more elegant and efficient. I can honestly report that I had the best of my ideas about how to proceed by using ideas that were both efficient and (again IMO) elegant when high and the results have borne out the value of my stoned ideas...it's amazing how many times classes can be reused for different things...
Just for reference the latest app I did consists of about 20 interacting classes to produce output in PDF form suitable for local government use from a multi-tabbed GUI. The code consists of ~8000 lines of java and there is much 'rote' type code but minimal code duplication (i hope). Also I develop on my own without programming help from anyone else, only the council admin guy gives me any input as he must spec the req's. The people I work for are rapt with the results I have produced and want more apps from me.
I agree with the actual coding being hard while stoned, but abstract algorithms which provide the templates for the eventual code flow thick and fast when I'm high and like the GP, I write them down, go hard on the whiteboard and review the ideas the next day. Many times I have even surprised myself at how many loose ends can be tied up with a single piece of string.
My advice, don't be too quick to dismiss things which on the surface may seem contradictory or nonsensical until you are sure you have borne all relevant factors (both known and possible unknowns) into account. Life isn't black and white.
Lets do the math. One Executive Order nationwide making one federal tax uniform and recognition that marijuana is a non-prescription drug that in mild doses provides relief from anxiety and stress, and in stronger doses relief from cancer med chemo therapy side effects, muscular dystrophy and more.
Oh. The math. 50 thousand shops would spring up employing a half million people, some with limited job history in their dream job. Good to fight inflation. If these dopes wanna lay around, out of circulation, burning their money—let them.
I am not an anony coward. I am michael stephen levinson, independent write-in candidate for president
http://youtu.be/KWKMPRFNowM?hd=1.l;
One Executive Order could change the law. 50 thousand shops would spring up. 500,000 people, many of whom with limited job history would be in their dream job—taxpayers. The pot would be taxed also. Good.
I have had priviledge of coding with best in the world, talking near perfect IQ tests, been to MIT etc. What they all had in common was their brain thinks faster than normal people, when they smoke pot they can actually focus and concentrate on code like a normal person. I remember one time one of these guys flunked a math test because he ran out, he rewrote it next day stoned and got a perfect 100%. For fun he'd sit up late at night stoned all the time hacking at the linux kernel trying to make it better. For normal people, there are 2 types, ones that shouldn't be programmers and ones that really do want to be there. The type that do want to be there come up with more creative ideas stoned, then implement them the next day, a coding block on an algorithm easily solved with having a joint, then tackling it the next day. Then there are the types that aren't creative that shouldn't be programmers to begin with that it doesn't help them at all. In overall society legalizing is probably a better thing, criminal minds that would go off committing crimes, instead smoke a joint, and say , screw it, lets just play xbox for rest of night, or just hang and chill, creating less work load on society. In general my opinion is do it in balance, don't smoke pot for 6 months straight or it will take you a full month to gain your longterm memory back, just do it here and there for a breather from life, as a sleeping pill or to overcome a coding block. Having a joint means you become effectively 2 people analyzing same problem, 2 minds are better than 1, and generally reason it is easier to solve problems thinking outside the box at times. I am definately not advocating smoking a joint everyday, unless you have no job or income(then go for it), but just in balance, it never hurts to approach things from a different philosophical perspective.
We have programming because of recreational drugs
Considering the lack of quality software out there... We are not talking about cycling races here...