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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.
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
I would expect code produced under the influence to have more bugs, less comments and generally be an unmaintainable mess.
You forget how stunningly crap the spec and use cases you've been provided are?
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.
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'.
In this case, probably non-conventional logic; computers don't operate the way human brains do, it takes a twisted head to program well. Especially if you're attempting to optimize a system using low level programming languages.
Of course, I've said before: Drug tests are mostly to attempt to filter out incompetent low level employees, trending a bit upwards when they're operating dangerous equipment. By the time you're a serious professional, I figure the general attitude is that they don't want to know, but secretly expect you to be able to handle your recreational drug use. IE the difference between a lawyer and a burger flipper is the Lawyer is expected to know how to handle his cocaine habit. IE as long as his performance doesn't degrade unacceptably, he's good.
I don't read AC A human right
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.
Recreational drugs serve more as a device to cope with Management than they do for any other aspects of developing code.
This is your code:
This is your code on drugs:
Any questions?
Drug tests are a dumb american war on drugs phenomenon. Nobody in Canada or the rest of the world takes them.
If you can't filter out incompetent employees without a cup of urine, you fail at HR 101.
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
How about: Write something whiled doped. Read that when sobered up. Pick out the good bits. Write it into a coherent story, edit, publish. I suspect that is much closer to the way most writers use drugs to increase creativity. Good writing is only 5% creative ideas, but that 5% can destroy an otherwise gifted author's career if it just won't show up to the party. The idea is that the sober brain has a lot of filters that stop 'stupid' thoughts making it up to the conscious level, getting doped relaxes those filters letting a lot of stupid stuff through. But like any piece of filtering software, sometimes there are false positives, and those false positives are more likely to be groundbreakingly creative ideas simply by their nature of being so close to the stupid line.
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!
Majority of coding work should be preemptive coding for scalability.
PHB: Listen, Bill, I have a small programming task for you. We need an application that pops a dialog up, asks for a number, and appends that number, as plain text, to a file. Could you put this together before lunch?
Bill: Hey, boss, this is a major undertaking. Since we want to ensure scalability of this application I need to make it so it accepts a form definition language, parses it, executes scripts in another language, and then spits it into a variable, programmable set of databases which could be plain text files as you want, or ODBC connections, or The Cloud. Of course we want strong crypto on all that, and biometric authentication at every step. My team of ten will probably do it within a year or two.
PHB: Bill, are you high?
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.
This happens to me with weed... I generally have a better experience with it if I'm using it regularly. If I let my tolerance get too low it makes me uncomfortably anxious and paranoid. I've heard other people say this too.
It is not contradictory in the least, he goes home, smokes, relaxes, and in that relaxed state he thinks about his job in a relaxed and creative state and he writes down the ideas and brings them to work.
What about that is contradictory?
If you do think it is contradictory do you have personal experience with being high?
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