3 ms·

Funny, but not nice and not necessary. Downvoters: you are aware that Zed lists problems he has struggled with and that his generalization of this list to 'com

Funny, but not nice and not necessary. Downvoters: you are aware that Zed lists problems he has struggled with and that his generalization of this list to 'common problems programmers face' is perhaps not warranted for all problems mentioned? If it was a serious suggestion, jacquesm would have included an explanation of why programmers would commonly face mental health problems.

mechanical_fish 16y ago
Everyone, and I do mean everyone, with a mental health issue understands the first problem with mental health: People try to laugh it off, or hide it out of fear that others will laugh it off. Since people literally end up dead at an early age because of this attitude, your flippant comment seems likely to be downvoted by folks who have encountered mental illness, and that is a lot of people. Such is the risk of being flippant. Fortunately there's a -4 limit and you'll live. Do you really need an explanation of why programmers might be at risk of mental health problems? To first order, Zed's list speaks for itself: being in poor health tends to depress you, especially the part about bad sleep. The depression and the health effects feed back on each other in a nasty way. But I'd add that loneliness is a big factor. These days we have amazing tech like IRC and Twitter and HN, and it's easy to imagine that we can have rich social lives without ever seeing another person except through the medium of text. Well, your brain, designed and conditioned as it is for the presence of actual physical humans, may think differently. I spent eighteen months working as a solo consultant in my office, meeting clients only via email and the occasional phone call, and it eventually drove me bananas. My wife still laughs about the day I took half an hour off to go to the barber and then raved about the awesome social experience. Even if you work in an office the isolation can be frustrating, because as a programmer you routinely work on problems that nobody else understands or wants to understand - even your fellow programmers, who are trying to focus on problems of their own. To interact with others you need to really break your focus, but that causes you to slow down, so maybe you try not to do it, and before you know it everyone else has gone home and it is dark and you're wandering through an empty parking lot... Remember, solitary confinement is one of the worst tortures you can inflict on a human.
- Confusion 16y ago
  your flippant comment seems likely to be downvoted by folks who have encountered mental illness This 'flippant' comment was made by someone with enough experience with mental illness to not warrant downvoting based on their own projection of me not having enough respect for the seriousness of mental illness. Do you really need an explanation of why programmers might be at risk of mental health problems? Yes, I really need an explanation of why mental health problems would be especially common among programmers and why Zed would need to include it in a book aimed at aspiring programmers. I don't think the risk of mental problems is even remotely close to the the risk of some of the physical problems mentioned, because contrary to your anecdote, every programmer I've met so far did not work alone for extended periods and was not reclusive. You're making the same dubious generalization as Zed: turning your own experience into something that you suppose to be 'common'. I'm asking for evidence of that. Your personal experience with loneliness does not provide that. The question is what additional risks to your mental health becoming a programmer introduces, beyond the fact that mental health problems are already reason number one for disfunctioning, unhappiness, and even death in certain age categories. Should every writer of every introduction on any professional subject include a section on mental health problems, because everyone is at risk of them? I'd rather advocate people being taught the risks of certain working conditions in highschool.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    > contrary to your anecdote, every programmer I've met so far did not work alone for extended periods and was not reclusive > I'm asking for evidence of that I can't speak for 'mechanical_fish' but I've seen plenty of evidence of that, including two very sad cases (very smart but socially mal-adapted people that ended up living more or less like hermits).
    - Confusion 16y ago
      But was that because they were programmers or because their mind was already wired that way? If they had become physicists, would they not have ended up living more or less like hermits? Lets suppose that they are self-taught programmers: would a section on mental health in the introductory works they read, warning them against the dangers of loneliness and seclusion, have helped? Would they have heeded the warnings and would they have been able to socialize, or were they already the kind of people that didn't socialize anyway? The problem may be the other way around: programming attracts people, because it's a profession where you can be working alone. If that is part of the attraction, no amount of offtopic warnings are going to help. Only someone physically near that cares can help and then we are still supposing that these people are unhappy. Mechanical_fish needs company and social interactions, which is pretty normal. However, that doesn't mean that everyone needs it. You run the risk of imposing your moral standard about 'socializing' on others, that can, and want to, get by with little social interaction.
jacquesm 16y ago
If you though that was in jest then I'm really sorry I didn't make it clear that I was 100% serious. I don't think an explanation of why programmers commonly face mental health problems is required beyond asking you to read through the last years postings on HN, which include some very sad entries indeed.
- Confusion 16y ago
  Such stories are extremely varied. You're now arguing that people in general, not programmers specifically, commonly face mental health problems. The question here is what additional risks you run when you become a programmer. If there are only few or none, then including a section on mental health in a book about learning to program is really straying from the subject of the book.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    > Such stories are extremely varied That's true. > You're now arguing that people in general, not programmers specifically, commonly face mental health problems. No, I mean to imply that programmers, contrary to people in general may be at a higher risk to develop mental issues, mostly related to work pressure, personality related issues that tend to surface earlier or more serious with people that are regularly under stress and people that deal with abstractions that they can not easily talk about with others leading to isolation, and isolation is the exact wrong thing to do for people dealing with pressure and stress on a daily basis. But if you're not talking about your work anymore (or even about why it matters to you) then alarm bells won't ring until it is much too late. Now I could go and dig up the HN references I was alluding to earlier but I think the memories of some of those would tear open wounds that are best left to heal. Anecdotally, for the size of the community the number of people that have come forward here out of their own accord and that have testified to having 'issues', and very serious ones at that is something of a surprise to me. It would be good to prove/disprove this by pointing to some study or other that has listed mental health issues and their occurrence by profession but either my google fu is failing me or such a study does not exist.

mechanical_fish 16y ago

Everyone, and I do mean everyone, with a mental health issue understands the first problem with mental health: People try to laugh it off, or hide it out of fear that others will laugh it off. Since people literally end up dead at an early age because of this attitude, your flippant comment seems likely to be downvoted by folks who have encountered mental illness, and that is a lot of people. Such is the risk of being flippant. Fortunately there's a -4 limit and you'll live. Do you really need an explanation of why programmers might be at risk of mental health problems? To first order, Zed's list speaks for itself: being in poor health tends to depress you, especially the part about bad sleep. The depression and the health effects feed back on each other in a nasty way. But I'd add that loneliness is a big factor. These days we have amazing tech like IRC and Twitter and HN, and it's easy to imagine that we can have rich social lives without ever seeing another person except through the medium of text. Well, your brain, designed and conditioned as it is for the presence of actual physical humans, may think differently. I spent eighteen months working as a solo consultant in my office, meeting clients only via email and the occasional phone call, and it eventually drove me bananas. My wife still laughs about the day I took half an hour off to go to the barber and then raved about the awesome social experience. Even if you work in an office the isolation can be frustrating, because as a programmer you routinely work on problems that nobody else understands or wants to understand - even your fellow programmers, who are trying to focus on problems of their own. To interact with others you need to really break your focus, but that causes you to slow down, so maybe you try not to do it, and before you know it everyone else has gone home and it is dark and you're wandering through an empty parking lot... Remember, solitary confinement is one of the worst tortures you can inflict on a human.

Confusion 16y ago
your flippant comment seems likely to be downvoted by folks who have encountered mental illness This 'flippant' comment was made by someone with enough experience with mental illness to not warrant downvoting based on their own projection of me not having enough respect for the seriousness of mental illness. Do you really need an explanation of why programmers might be at risk of mental health problems? Yes, I really need an explanation of why mental health problems would be especially common among programmers and why Zed would need to include it in a book aimed at aspiring programmers. I don't think the risk of mental problems is even remotely close to the the risk of some of the physical problems mentioned, because contrary to your anecdote, every programmer I've met so far did not work alone for extended periods and was not reclusive. You're making the same dubious generalization as Zed: turning your own experience into something that you suppose to be 'common'. I'm asking for evidence of that. Your personal experience with loneliness does not provide that. The question is what additional risks to your mental health becoming a programmer introduces, beyond the fact that mental health problems are already reason number one for disfunctioning, unhappiness, and even death in certain age categories. Should every writer of every introduction on any professional subject include a section on mental health problems, because everyone is at risk of them? I'd rather advocate people being taught the risks of certain working conditions in highschool.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  > contrary to your anecdote, every programmer I've met so far did not work alone for extended periods and was not reclusive > I'm asking for evidence of that I can't speak for 'mechanical_fish' but I've seen plenty of evidence of that, including two very sad cases (very smart but socially mal-adapted people that ended up living more or less like hermits).
  - Confusion 16y ago
    But was that because they were programmers or because their mind was already wired that way? If they had become physicists, would they not have ended up living more or less like hermits? Lets suppose that they are self-taught programmers: would a section on mental health in the introductory works they read, warning them against the dangers of loneliness and seclusion, have helped? Would they have heeded the warnings and would they have been able to socialize, or were they already the kind of people that didn't socialize anyway? The problem may be the other way around: programming attracts people, because it's a profession where you can be working alone. If that is part of the attraction, no amount of offtopic warnings are going to help. Only someone physically near that cares can help and then we are still supposing that these people are unhappy. Mechanical_fish needs company and social interactions, which is pretty normal. However, that doesn't mean that everyone needs it. You run the risk of imposing your moral standard about 'socializing' on others, that can, and want to, get by with little social interaction.

jacquesm 16y ago

If you though that was in jest then I'm really sorry I didn't make it clear that I was 100% serious. I don't think an explanation of why programmers commonly face mental health problems is required beyond asking you to read through the last years postings on HN, which include some very sad entries indeed.

Confusion 16y ago
Such stories are extremely varied. You're now arguing that people in general, not programmers specifically, commonly face mental health problems. The question here is what additional risks you run when you become a programmer. If there are only few or none, then including a section on mental health in a book about learning to program is really straying from the subject of the book.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  > Such stories are extremely varied That's true. > You're now arguing that people in general, not programmers specifically, commonly face mental health problems. No, I mean to imply that programmers, contrary to people in general may be at a higher risk to develop mental issues, mostly related to work pressure, personality related issues that tend to surface earlier or more serious with people that are regularly under stress and people that deal with abstractions that they can not easily talk about with others leading to isolation, and isolation is the exact wrong thing to do for people dealing with pressure and stress on a daily basis. But if you're not talking about your work anymore (or even about why it matters to you) then alarm bells won't ring until it is much too late. Now I could go and dig up the HN references I was alluding to earlier but I think the memories of some of those would tear open wounds that are best left to heal. Anecdotally, for the size of the community the number of people that have come forward here out of their own accord and that have testified to having 'issues', and very serious ones at that is something of a surprise to me. It would be good to prove/disprove this by pointing to some study or other that has listed mental health issues and their occurrence by profession but either my google fu is failing me or such a study does not exist.