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Ask HN: Neurological Effects of Computer Programming?

82 points by amar-laksh 5y ago

Does anyone know of any short or long term neurological effects (positive/negative) of computer programming/engineering?

feisar 5y ago
for me i speak differently and write differently writing: i do not use capitals or p unless i force myself to type a capital letter or punctuation speaking: when i dont pay attention i use "!" and "null"
- booleandilemma 5y ago
  You missed a semicolon at the end there.
johntdaly 5y ago
Google “Programming ruined my life” or a variation thereof. There are 3 things to keep ahead of: 1) Programming is a sedentary job, if you don’t take care of yourself (some sport, weight lifting, something keeping you active) you will feel physical strains over time. 2) Burnout is a possibility, I’ve seen programmers that had burnout, not self diagnosed but actual burnout. It was not pretty. Ever since I try to watch out for my mental healthy. It is easy to be put under enough pressure to break or even put yourself under that pressure (imposter syndrome …) 3) General negativity and naysaying. Part of the job is finding problems, debugging and generally poking holes in ideas so you don’t waste a lot of time implementing stuff that is impossible to begin with. Don’t let this become a part of you, don’t even let this take over in your job. It will rob you of the joy of programming. That is what I gather from articles I’ve read over time and from myself. I am not aware of any research, just anecdotal evidence.
- newsbinator 5y ago
  Number 3 (general negativity and naysaying) is horrible and pervasive. It takes a concerted daily effort not to fall too far into it.
  - adoga 5y ago
    Any tips on how to improve? I've noticed myself really shrinking into a negative attitude lately -- not sure how to prevent myself from becoming the stereotypical jaded senior engineer (I do certainly feel like I have quite a bit management-wise to be jaded about though, which is part of the problem).
    - sdeep27 5y ago
      Explore environments where it's hard for you to be jaded/cynical. Nature or being around kids (volunteering to teach them how to code is one idea) immediately come to mind.
      - ethbr0 5y ago
        Also, excercise the ability to just not say anything. By all means, don't bury your head in the sand. But some things aren't productive to talk about. Functionally, you get the same results whether or not you slight that other team / manager / process in a conversation. Everything is always broken. But we get to choose if we only have conversations complaining about broken things.
    - specialist 5y ago
      > Any tips on how to improve? How you talk changes how you think. Ages ago, desperate to stop being angry, and completely out of any other ideas, I decided "Fine, I'll just fake being happy, positive." Shockingly, after about 3 years, what started out as mostly sarcastic, actually mostly worked. From my reading since, I stumbled onto techniques known to academics, practitioners. To get a sense of the mechanics, imagine having the habit of swearing all the time, and wanting to stop. Habits can be replaced, not unlearned. So I literally scripted responses, practiced saying them, tried to use the new script in place of my old script, and caught myself when I goofed. Both in my head (internal dialog) and interacting with others. It got easier over time. Backsliding is super easy. Even now, decades later. You can't dwell on that. Just acknowledge it and get back to the program. (Get back on the horse.) It helps to have "positive" people in your life that you don't want to disappoint. For instance, I'm mostly able to avoid trolling here on HN because I really value u/dang's approval and efforts and it'd kinda hurts me emotionally to disappoint him. Find people IRL to serve in that role. And avoid other people displaying the habits you're trying to not do yourself. Forgive yourself. Choose to become the best version of yourself. Be kind to yourself. Good luck.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  4) Damage to your fingers, wrists, and eyes. (Yeah, I know, the people with physical jobs that destroy their bodies are breaking out the world's smallest violin...) At a minimum, carpal tunnel can be considered neurological.
  - anchpop 5y ago
    I’m 21 and my carpal tunnel was already getting quite bad. What fixed it for me was to use this keyboard [0] (with the stand to lift up the front) and this mouse [1]. I’ve tried a bunch of ergonomic keyboards and mice, some very expensive, and these are by far the best I’ve tried. The keyboard has the annoying quirk that it’s permanently paired to the dongle it comes with, so don’t lose it or you’re buying a new keyboard. The mouse is awesome though. Battery charges with USB-C and everything. Basically a huge issue is that a normal keyboard and mouse force you to completely pronate your arms. That puts stress on your joints and isn’t healthy to do for an extended time (the bones in your arm are not a rigid system and actually move independently as you rotate them). The keyboard and mouse I recommend reduce significantly the amount of pronation required. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Ergonomic-Keyboard-Business-5KV-00001/dp/B00CYX26BC/ https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Ergonomic-Keyboard-Business... [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Vertical-Wireless-Mouse-Rechargeable/dp/B07FNJB8TT/ https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Vertical-Wireless-Mouse-Rech...
- api 5y ago
  A student once asked me an interesting question: "what are the occupational hazards of this career?" Most people naively assume there are not any. I told them poor health due to a sedentary lifestyle, depression, and social isolation.
  - swader999 5y ago
    A lot disparage this career for "you sit in front of a computer all day" but fail to realize that this is the way a lot of other work has gone towards.
  - kace91 5y ago
    To be fair, I'd say those are "things this job doesn't provide" vs just harm. Some people get their daily dose of excercise, social interaction and dopamine hits from their work. In our field, we don't, so we need to find complementary activities for that.
- kace91 5y ago
  > 3) General negativity and naysaying. I am guilty of this, and I've never thought about it as a problem, just as how my mind is wired. That comment was a bit of an epiphany for me so thanks!
  - KineticLensman 5y ago
    Something I discovered as a reviewer was the importance of reigning in my own negativity tendency, i.e. to pick holes in things. If I reviewed something that I didn't personally like, but which would in fact still work, I learned to decide whether or not it was worth mentioning it or not. That way I wouldn't overload the reviewee with a mass of criticism, and the things that would genuinely need changing weren't hidden in a flood of picky little points.
  - micromacrofoot 5y ago
    One thing that works for me is trying to push this problem-finding routine into general curiosity about the world around me... I never expected to get into gardening but I started learning more about the plants and weeds growing in my little yard, and one thing lead to another. I've also started keeping track of the birds.
- NetOpWibby 5y ago
  Number 3 is killer. I’m in a private Slack with a bunch of white designers and boy are they negative. ANYTHING gets released and they hear about it? Teardowns that’ll make iFixit’s head spin! I take a leave of absence when the force is strong.
  - junon 5y ago
    Curious, what does the designers being white have to do with anything? Are designers of other ethnicities immune to this?
    - throwaway743 5y ago
      Could have meant "whiney" and got auto corrected? Idk but yeah if mentioning ethnicity was the intention, it's a ridiculous statement
      - NetOpWibby 5y ago
        Yes, autocorrect but weird how that still fits. I’ll keep the typo for transparency.
        junon 5y ago
        > but weird how that still fits Not really though.
        pickledish 5y ago
        I think they just meant that all the designers on the team happen to be white, so even with the typo, the statement is still technically correct.
        NetOpWibby 5y ago
        Yup, this exactly.
    - 5y ago
- junon 5y ago
  #3 is the worst. It's not even contained to my job - it's a huge hindrance in life in general.
  - randomopining 5y ago
    Seriously. It's like you're constantly looking for logical reasons why something will fail. Gotta figure out how to stop it.
- hsuduebc2 5y ago
  Third point actually sums up your whole post. Are there any positives?
  - phkahler 5y ago
    >> Are there any positives? Have you ever enjoyed solving a puzzle or solving a problem? We do that daily, even if we didn't decide which puzzles to solve. Do you find satisfaction in fixing things or making them better? How about designing or building things from scratch? Do you find that rewarding? Flexible schedule? Remote work? Higher pay than XXX? I think the point is that there are downsides people often overlook, not that there aren't any upsides.
- wibagusto 5y ago
  Being sedentary or burnt out could happen in any industry so I’d argue those need to be categorized more specifically. Perhaps: Language fatigue, zealotry in discussions (e.g the more one deals with logic, the more one thinks their way/language is the best), pace of evolution (keeping up with new trends is sometimes pointless effort because it’s a rehash of yesteryear—e.g markdown when asciidoc/html is good enough). Sedentary can be expanded to hyper focus on solving a problem leads to self neglect. Programming can be an isolated behavior. I’d recommend social coding and attending hackathons and meetups. I’d like to add positive notes: programming has helped me reason about the world effectively. For instance, data organization, parallel work (applied to people as well as machines), iteration methodology (agile mindset can be applied to real projects like home renovations), problem solving ability (how to isolate issues and reduce a problem into something solvable).
- aspaviento 5y ago
  4) You can't stop noticing how poorly optimized many of the things in life are.
  - hsuduebc2 5y ago
    Omg exactly this.
- MrQuincle 5y ago
  About 3. One of the coolest attitudes I saw was from someone (autistic, but that doesn't matter) who approached every problem as something to love, to cherish, to appreciate. Now I'm reading a book about the early days in Bell labs. I feel through the pages how much fun they had with finding issues, finding things to improve, finding out the future. I think there's so much to gain if you can find a positive approach to problems. Also in real life!
  - tailspin2019 5y ago
    That book sounds interesting! Could you share a link?
    - lioeters 5y ago
      Maybe this one: The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idea_Factory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idea_Factory
      - MrQuincle 5y ago
        Yes, this one!
      - tailspin2019 5y ago
        Thanks!
    - anchpop 5y ago
      Probably not the same book, but the guy who developed Hamming codes (his name was Hamming obviously) wrote a stupendous book that talks a lot about his time at Bell called The Art and Science of Doing Engineering
      - tailspin2019 5y ago
        Well it looks like I've now got two "stupendous" books to read :-)
dekhn 5y ago
I constantly interpret everything in life as a programming optimization problem. It drives everybody around me crazy.
- amar-laksh 5y ago
  I do that too! That's part of the reason I was wondering what it does to our brains long-term
  - marton78 5y ago
    When you start dreaming about yourself being code and consisting of modules you know you've done something to your brain.
    - woolcap 5y ago
      I once had a dream where I could 'pipe' physical objects through a bash command-line...
- ferd 5y ago
  You might enjoy reading "Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions"
- bobthechef 5y ago
  This is the Law of Instrument. It's a disease. (It isn't a "neurological effect", pace what the other commenter suggests and despite whatever neurological correlates it has, strictly speaking.) To broaden your horizons, consider diversifying your interests. Don't use ALL your time programming. Devote some of the free time you might be using to program for others things that broaden the mind. Try good literature (classics), good philosophy (approachable in the way its written unless you want to become a scholar of this stuff), and leisure. Literature helps you break out of the prejudices of your own culture. Philosophy lets you develop a clearer grasp of the big picture and ultimate reality. Leisure (NOT recreation) entails the passive absorption of the world around you and allows it to enter into your mind without you running your gears all the time. Contemplation is perhaps the purest form of leisure. It dissolves our alienation from reality. Turn those gears off and you have a better chance to break out of your mental rut. Over time, you will put programming in its place.
qq4 5y ago
I know that when I get into a "flow state" while programming I tell my spouse to have patience with the way I reason/talk for the next few hours. Best way I can describe how I feel is the Tetris effect turned up to 11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect
- liamwire 5y ago
  I’ve experienced this carry-over into my verbal communication with my partner before, it’s nice to have a name for it.
- sourdoughness 5y ago
  Plus one here: I get a strong case of the cliche “man must fix problem” after a solid day of programming. It’s helpful when you can keep it in balance, but it’s definitely not the right tool for all situations.
  - dj_gitmo 5y ago
    This reminds me of a great scene from "Halt and Catch Fire". The lead engineer, Gordon, is supposed to be making dinner for his kids and putting them to bed while his wife is away, but he notices a small leak from the kitchen sink. He then drops all plans and next you see him under the sink. Marital problems ensue.
    - swayvil 5y ago
      Woo! new tv show to watch
      - dj_gitmo 5y ago
        It's really good, both as a drama with great characters, and as a show about tech.
        swayvil 5y ago
jraph 5y ago
I don't see many positive things in this thread. I'd like to cast some positive light here. I don't know if my mindset is what lead me to programming or if this is a virtuous circle, but I value how I approach concepts, ideas and people interactions in life, thinking clearly and consciously about problems and situations, including people problem, and I'd not be surprised to learn these things could be linked. There is also some creativity through out-of-the-box thinking to come up with solutions to random problems. This stuff can be trained through other (analytical) activities than programming too, of course. I do a lot of programming in my spare time and I don't see clear drawbacks specific to programming. Approach life positively, be open-minded, be patient, your opinion is not necessarily the right one, don't be over-confident, spend energy into understanding the perspective of other people, etc. All this should be applied to programming too as soon as you work with other people anyway. Programming does not make you antisocial in itself, and can certainly actually help if you leverage and transpose the rights skills at the right time. If you are the kind of people who are very analytical, even in interactions with people, that's a strength that can make you a very lovable, trusty person if you don't make it creepy. It can help you provide balanced, reasonable, valuable insight to someone who is confiding in you for instance. People may trust you for avoiding saying pleasant but false things, which makes your pleasant feedback more trusty. You'll find pleasant but true stuff to say anyway, thanks to your problem-solving mindset. I also spend a lot of time with various people (most of them not being programmers) and going outside, and that's also a very important aspect of who I am. Programming does not prevent this.
streamofdigits 5y ago
Makes you think the universe is a computer and other such obsessions
- silverscania 5y ago
  It might be
  - marton78 5y ago
    It is! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-2P3MSZrBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-2P3MSZrBM
- kbrtalan 5y ago
  Stephen Wolfram, is that you?
sdeep27 5y ago
I think it's a great question, and one that specialists of all fields should ask themselves (-> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9formation_professionnelle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9formation_professionnel... ). As a solution, everyone will find different things that work for them, but doing things that have no relation physically/mentally to work (screen time, high logic use, software related problems, sitting) and essentially are on the opposite end of the spectrum, like hiking, swimming, tennis have helped for me.
- amar-laksh 5y ago
  Thank you so much for the term! This is exactly what I was looking for in order to start a deep dive that hopefully will help with Déformation professionnelle! :D
swayvil 5y ago
Speaking as a meditation guy. When you spend a lot of time concentrating your attention (as we do when solving our engineering puzzles) you tend to stay concentrated. It becomes a lifestyle. And when you spend a lot of time concentrating on ideas, you tend to stay concentrated on ideas. Ideas are your world. But ideas are not the world. The world is infinitely larger. And concentration is brother to blindness. Which is to say, concentrating on X leads to ignoring Y, Z and Q. Pardon me if this is vague.
- fvv 5y ago
  don't worry it's not vague I think both types of thinking are needed, creativity can be suppressed by too much concentration or fatigue, but it certainly becomes more effective if nourished by the knowledge that concentration helps to obtain
- mekkkkkk 5y ago
  > Ideas are your world. Wow, I feel that this describes me perfectly. I've never considered it before, but I tend to think in hypotheticals, generalized broad solutions or abstract concepts. I rarely spend brain power thinking of practical or tangible things. Maybe this is a consequence of (or reinforced by) programming since an early age. It has certainly taken it's toll. I'm always the one that forgets social occasions, leaves a mess and have sub-par social skills. My mind is always "in the clouds" so to speak.
- myfavoritedog 5y ago
  Meditation is an amazing thing. Its impact on your mind and your understanding of your mind can be profound. Sadly, many of the people who could most use the practice find the whole concept to be laughable.
siva7 5y ago
This is a good topic and vastly underappreciated. It’s a career where you should closely listen to your body and have an active lifestyle due to the sedentary nature of this career. When it doesn’t feel right stop for the day and look after yourself. Do some sport, meet friends. If it doesn’t help, change jobs. Never let someone above abuse you. Otherwise your health will start to suffer in the years coming.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
amar-laksh 5y ago
It's so telling that most of the comments here are either: cautionary tales or negative effects. I sure feel young and naive in this audience.
- tluyben2 5y ago
  Everyone who has programmed full-time for a good number of years will have had some of the negative effects, even though many go in loving programming itself. Things around programming, mostly the very things that make programming a practical skill, like making money, using frameworks and libraries, deadlines etc can make it a horrorshow. If I just work on little fun projects no one will ever see, I am that boy from 40 years ago again who loved every second of writing software.
adflux 5y ago
Losing people skills. Not running into many women in your place of work. Your group of friends consisting of mostly (programming) men, who struggle to meet or even talk to women.
- amar-laksh 5y ago
  I've found talking to myself out loud while coding kinda helps with that.
- gibbonsrcool 5y ago
  This hit close to home. I don't think it's exclusive to programmers. I think this is happening in all industries, we just see it to a greater degree. Everyone's aware of polarization in politics, but I think it's happening to race, gender, and any other culturally distinct segment of humanity. With all this increased connectedness, we're distilling into groups that are like-minded, politically and otherwise. I went to an all boys school. I believe it was terrible for social development and made it hard to relate to women. When I see that same-sex education is on the rise I feel we're making a big mistake.
  - hsuduebc2 5y ago
    I actually started dating after I left university when I was twenty one years old. Till that moment I was drinking monster and playing dota most of the time while occasionally program something. Sad thing is I was terrible in that game.
hsuduebc2 5y ago
Are there any positives?
agentcoops 5y ago
I've discussed the topic of "aphantasia" (the inability to form mental images [0]) with programmers at various jobs as well as with non-developer friends. It's certainly anecdata, but it's always been curious to me that I've only ever heard engineers identify with this condition -- and more frequently than the understood likelihood of it within the general population would lead me to expect. So, again, not a known neurological effect of programming, but an interesting correlation I've observed between many of the best programmers I've known and the condition of aphantasia. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
- ryandvm 5y ago
  Interesting. I'm a software developer and I've only recently become aware that I seem to be deficient in this area. For example, I can imagine the concept of particular person's face (shape, features, etc.), but there's not really a visual aspect to it in my mind's eye. Of course, it's kind of hard to figure out if what you imagine is what somebody else imagines.
- agentcoops 5y ago
  Coincidentally, within the original 1880 study [0] that first grappled with the phenomena it was most highly-correlated with scientists. He concludes that: "scientific men as a class have feeble powers of visual representation... My own conclusion is, that an over-readiness to perceive clear mental pictures is antagonistic to the acquirement of habits of highly generalised and abstract thought." [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20160416064610/http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20160416064610/http://psychclass...
ryandvm 5y ago
I'll tell you what, it'll aggravate any latent imposter syndrome you may be dealing with...
mbar84 5y ago
Who knows about correlation or causation, but programming and humility go together. Training people to always ask the questions: - How do I know that this is true? - What would otherwise have to be true for this conclusion to follow? - How can I bisect this process to test a hypothesis? So much wishful thinking and jumping to conclusions could be avoided if programming (and debugging more specifically) is a training to viscerally understand the scientific method.
- tompazourek 5y ago
  Humility is a great personality trait, but from my experience, programmers are unfortunately rarely humble.
rajangdavis 5y ago
Anecdotally, it makes it easier to map disparate things into something more structured. I would rather have spaghetti code than a spaghetti brain. Problem solving is dominant in my way of thinking which can be good or bad depending on the context. It's helpful for giving advice but terrible from an empathetic and listening standpoint. On the negative side, I have hard time reading emotional tone in text. It does not aid in communication nor soft/social skills.
nescioquid 5y ago
I read a about a study which considered how scientists and engineers who wrote code thought about their programs. The scientists considered their code as an extension of their own thinking, whereas engineers were mainly preoccupied with how the code could fail. There is probably also a virtuous cycle which reinforces how the scientist and engineer view their code, so it may be hard to untangle how much of that thought pattern was "innate" vs learned. I think your question is interesting and I wonder if it may depend (in part) on one's motivations for writing software.
- civilized 5y ago
  > I read a about a study which considered how scientists and engineers who wrote code thought about their programs. The scientists considered their code as an extension of their own thinking, whereas engineers were mainly preoccupied with how the code could fail. This makes sense when you consider why they're writing the code. Scientists use code as an electronic brain to answer scientific questions that are too complicated to answer mentally or with pen and paper. Engineers create services that don't necessarily answer scientific questions, but do useful work and need to be reliable. There is a substantial intersection though: for example, Google provides services that answer interesting/scientific questions, like "what are people saying on the internet" and "the frequency of words in books over time", while also being thoroughly engineered for performance and reliability.
xyzzy21 5y ago
Sure: you get more rational, logical and objective compared to "normies". This is 100% a good thing and an improvement over the average person. It's part of why more successful CEOs et al. have engineering background than liberal arts. There's also an effect on couples - my mother became radically more rational thanks to living with my father, an ME. The other aspect: you don't put up with bullshit as readily especially of the propaganda/lying forms so common today.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  Incredibly ironic comment
rramadass 5y ago
Brain and Autonomic Nervous System activity measurement in Software Engineering: A Systematic Literature review : https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0164121221000431 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016412122... Check the "References" section on the above for a list of papers.
rajacombinator 5y ago
Leads to a massively inflated estimation of one’s intelligence from solving basic logic problems.
taphangum 5y ago
There was an interesting thread about this on Twitter a while ago: https://twitter.com/PlanFlowDev/status/1317680078734696448 https://twitter.com/PlanFlowDev/status/1317680078734696448

82 points by amar-laksh 5y ago

Does anyone know of any short or long term neurological effects (positive/negative) of computer programming/engineering?

feisar 5y ago

for me i speak differently and write differently writing: i do not use capitals or p unless i force myself to type a capital letter or punctuation speaking: when i dont pay attention i use "!" and "null"

booleandilemma 5y ago
You missed a semicolon at the end there.

johntdaly 5y ago

Google “Programming ruined my life” or a variation thereof. There are 3 things to keep ahead of: 1) Programming is a sedentary job, if you don’t take care of yourself (some sport, weight lifting, something keeping you active) you will feel physical strains over time. 2) Burnout is a possibility, I’ve seen programmers that had burnout, not self diagnosed but actual burnout. It was not pretty. Ever since I try to watch out for my mental healthy. It is easy to be put under enough pressure to break or even put yourself under that pressure (imposter syndrome …) 3) General negativity and naysaying. Part of the job is finding problems, debugging and generally poking holes in ideas so you don’t waste a lot of time implementing stuff that is impossible to begin with. Don’t let this become a part of you, don’t even let this take over in your job. It will rob you of the joy of programming. That is what I gather from articles I’ve read over time and from myself. I am not aware of any research, just anecdotal evidence.

newsbinator 5y ago
Number 3 (general negativity and naysaying) is horrible and pervasive. It takes a concerted daily effort not to fall too far into it.
- adoga 5y ago
  Any tips on how to improve? I've noticed myself really shrinking into a negative attitude lately -- not sure how to prevent myself from becoming the stereotypical jaded senior engineer (I do certainly feel like I have quite a bit management-wise to be jaded about though, which is part of the problem).
  - sdeep27 5y ago
    Explore environments where it's hard for you to be jaded/cynical. Nature or being around kids (volunteering to teach them how to code is one idea) immediately come to mind.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      Also, excercise the ability to just not say anything. By all means, don't bury your head in the sand. But some things aren't productive to talk about. Functionally, you get the same results whether or not you slight that other team / manager / process in a conversation. Everything is always broken. But we get to choose if we only have conversations complaining about broken things.
  - specialist 5y ago
    > Any tips on how to improve? How you talk changes how you think. Ages ago, desperate to stop being angry, and completely out of any other ideas, I decided "Fine, I'll just fake being happy, positive." Shockingly, after about 3 years, what started out as mostly sarcastic, actually mostly worked. From my reading since, I stumbled onto techniques known to academics, practitioners. To get a sense of the mechanics, imagine having the habit of swearing all the time, and wanting to stop. Habits can be replaced, not unlearned. So I literally scripted responses, practiced saying them, tried to use the new script in place of my old script, and caught myself when I goofed. Both in my head (internal dialog) and interacting with others. It got easier over time. Backsliding is super easy. Even now, decades later. You can't dwell on that. Just acknowledge it and get back to the program. (Get back on the horse.) It helps to have "positive" people in your life that you don't want to disappoint. For instance, I'm mostly able to avoid trolling here on HN because I really value u/dang's approval and efforts and it'd kinda hurts me emotionally to disappoint him. Find people IRL to serve in that role. And avoid other people displaying the habits you're trying to not do yourself. Forgive yourself. Choose to become the best version of yourself. Be kind to yourself. Good luck.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
4) Damage to your fingers, wrists, and eyes. (Yeah, I know, the people with physical jobs that destroy their bodies are breaking out the world's smallest violin...) At a minimum, carpal tunnel can be considered neurological.
- anchpop 5y ago
  I’m 21 and my carpal tunnel was already getting quite bad. What fixed it for me was to use this keyboard [0] (with the stand to lift up the front) and this mouse [1]. I’ve tried a bunch of ergonomic keyboards and mice, some very expensive, and these are by far the best I’ve tried. The keyboard has the annoying quirk that it’s permanently paired to the dongle it comes with, so don’t lose it or you’re buying a new keyboard. The mouse is awesome though. Battery charges with USB-C and everything. Basically a huge issue is that a normal keyboard and mouse force you to completely pronate your arms. That puts stress on your joints and isn’t healthy to do for an extended time (the bones in your arm are not a rigid system and actually move independently as you rotate them). The keyboard and mouse I recommend reduce significantly the amount of pronation required. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Ergonomic-Keyboard-Business-5KV-00001/dp/B00CYX26BC/ https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Ergonomic-Keyboard-Business... [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Vertical-Wireless-Mouse-Rechargeable/dp/B07FNJB8TT/ https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Vertical-Wireless-Mouse-Rech...
api 5y ago
A student once asked me an interesting question: "what are the occupational hazards of this career?" Most people naively assume there are not any. I told them poor health due to a sedentary lifestyle, depression, and social isolation.
- swader999 5y ago
  A lot disparage this career for "you sit in front of a computer all day" but fail to realize that this is the way a lot of other work has gone towards.
- kace91 5y ago
  To be fair, I'd say those are "things this job doesn't provide" vs just harm. Some people get their daily dose of excercise, social interaction and dopamine hits from their work. In our field, we don't, so we need to find complementary activities for that.
kace91 5y ago
> 3) General negativity and naysaying. I am guilty of this, and I've never thought about it as a problem, just as how my mind is wired. That comment was a bit of an epiphany for me so thanks!
- KineticLensman 5y ago
  Something I discovered as a reviewer was the importance of reigning in my own negativity tendency, i.e. to pick holes in things. If I reviewed something that I didn't personally like, but which would in fact still work, I learned to decide whether or not it was worth mentioning it or not. That way I wouldn't overload the reviewee with a mass of criticism, and the things that would genuinely need changing weren't hidden in a flood of picky little points.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  One thing that works for me is trying to push this problem-finding routine into general curiosity about the world around me... I never expected to get into gardening but I started learning more about the plants and weeds growing in my little yard, and one thing lead to another. I've also started keeping track of the birds.
NetOpWibby 5y ago
Number 3 is killer. I’m in a private Slack with a bunch of white designers and boy are they negative. ANYTHING gets released and they hear about it? Teardowns that’ll make iFixit’s head spin! I take a leave of absence when the force is strong.
- junon 5y ago
  Curious, what does the designers being white have to do with anything? Are designers of other ethnicities immune to this?
  - throwaway743 5y ago
    Could have meant "whiney" and got auto corrected? Idk but yeah if mentioning ethnicity was the intention, it's a ridiculous statement
    - NetOpWibby 5y ago
      Yes, autocorrect but weird how that still fits. I’ll keep the typo for transparency.
      - junon 5y ago
        > but weird how that still fits Not really though.
        pickledish 5y ago
        I think they just meant that all the designers on the team happen to be white, so even with the typo, the statement is still technically correct.
        NetOpWibby 5y ago
        Yup, this exactly.
  - 5y ago
junon 5y ago
#3 is the worst. It's not even contained to my job - it's a huge hindrance in life in general.
- randomopining 5y ago
  Seriously. It's like you're constantly looking for logical reasons why something will fail. Gotta figure out how to stop it.
hsuduebc2 5y ago
Third point actually sums up your whole post. Are there any positives?
- phkahler 5y ago
  >> Are there any positives? Have you ever enjoyed solving a puzzle or solving a problem? We do that daily, even if we didn't decide which puzzles to solve. Do you find satisfaction in fixing things or making them better? How about designing or building things from scratch? Do you find that rewarding? Flexible schedule? Remote work? Higher pay than XXX? I think the point is that there are downsides people often overlook, not that there aren't any upsides.
wibagusto 5y ago
Being sedentary or burnt out could happen in any industry so I’d argue those need to be categorized more specifically. Perhaps: Language fatigue, zealotry in discussions (e.g the more one deals with logic, the more one thinks their way/language is the best), pace of evolution (keeping up with new trends is sometimes pointless effort because it’s a rehash of yesteryear—e.g markdown when asciidoc/html is good enough). Sedentary can be expanded to hyper focus on solving a problem leads to self neglect. Programming can be an isolated behavior. I’d recommend social coding and attending hackathons and meetups. I’d like to add positive notes: programming has helped me reason about the world effectively. For instance, data organization, parallel work (applied to people as well as machines), iteration methodology (agile mindset can be applied to real projects like home renovations), problem solving ability (how to isolate issues and reduce a problem into something solvable).
aspaviento 5y ago
4) You can't stop noticing how poorly optimized many of the things in life are.
- hsuduebc2 5y ago
  Omg exactly this.
MrQuincle 5y ago
About 3. One of the coolest attitudes I saw was from someone (autistic, but that doesn't matter) who approached every problem as something to love, to cherish, to appreciate. Now I'm reading a book about the early days in Bell labs. I feel through the pages how much fun they had with finding issues, finding things to improve, finding out the future. I think there's so much to gain if you can find a positive approach to problems. Also in real life!
- tailspin2019 5y ago
  That book sounds interesting! Could you share a link?
  - lioeters 5y ago
    Maybe this one: The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idea_Factory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idea_Factory
    - MrQuincle 5y ago
      Yes, this one!
    - tailspin2019 5y ago
      Thanks!
  - anchpop 5y ago
    Probably not the same book, but the guy who developed Hamming codes (his name was Hamming obviously) wrote a stupendous book that talks a lot about his time at Bell called The Art and Science of Doing Engineering
    - tailspin2019 5y ago
      Well it looks like I've now got two "stupendous" books to read :-)

dekhn 5y ago

I constantly interpret everything in life as a programming optimization problem. It drives everybody around me crazy.

amar-laksh 5y ago
I do that too! That's part of the reason I was wondering what it does to our brains long-term
- marton78 5y ago
  When you start dreaming about yourself being code and consisting of modules you know you've done something to your brain.
  - woolcap 5y ago
    I once had a dream where I could 'pipe' physical objects through a bash command-line...
ferd 5y ago
You might enjoy reading "Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions"
bobthechef 5y ago
This is the Law of Instrument. It's a disease. (It isn't a "neurological effect", pace what the other commenter suggests and despite whatever neurological correlates it has, strictly speaking.) To broaden your horizons, consider diversifying your interests. Don't use ALL your time programming. Devote some of the free time you might be using to program for others things that broaden the mind. Try good literature (classics), good philosophy (approachable in the way its written unless you want to become a scholar of this stuff), and leisure. Literature helps you break out of the prejudices of your own culture. Philosophy lets you develop a clearer grasp of the big picture and ultimate reality. Leisure (NOT recreation) entails the passive absorption of the world around you and allows it to enter into your mind without you running your gears all the time. Contemplation is perhaps the purest form of leisure. It dissolves our alienation from reality. Turn those gears off and you have a better chance to break out of your mental rut. Over time, you will put programming in its place.

qq4 5y ago

I know that when I get into a "flow state" while programming I tell my spouse to have patience with the way I reason/talk for the next few hours. Best way I can describe how I feel is the Tetris effect turned up to 11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect

liamwire 5y ago
I’ve experienced this carry-over into my verbal communication with my partner before, it’s nice to have a name for it.
sourdoughness 5y ago
Plus one here: I get a strong case of the cliche “man must fix problem” after a solid day of programming. It’s helpful when you can keep it in balance, but it’s definitely not the right tool for all situations.
- dj_gitmo 5y ago
  This reminds me of a great scene from "Halt and Catch Fire". The lead engineer, Gordon, is supposed to be making dinner for his kids and putting them to bed while his wife is away, but he notices a small leak from the kitchen sink. He then drops all plans and next you see him under the sink. Marital problems ensue.
  - swayvil 5y ago
    Woo! new tv show to watch
    - dj_gitmo 5y ago
      It's really good, both as a drama with great characters, and as a show about tech.
      - swayvil 5y ago

jraph 5y ago

I don't see many positive things in this thread. I'd like to cast some positive light here. I don't know if my mindset is what lead me to programming or if this is a virtuous circle, but I value how I approach concepts, ideas and people interactions in life, thinking clearly and consciously about problems and situations, including people problem, and I'd not be surprised to learn these things could be linked. There is also some creativity through out-of-the-box thinking to come up with solutions to random problems. This stuff can be trained through other (analytical) activities than programming too, of course. I do a lot of programming in my spare time and I don't see clear drawbacks specific to programming. Approach life positively, be open-minded, be patient, your opinion is not necessarily the right one, don't be over-confident, spend energy into understanding the perspective of other people, etc. All this should be applied to programming too as soon as you work with other people anyway. Programming does not make you antisocial in itself, and can certainly actually help if you leverage and transpose the rights skills at the right time. If you are the kind of people who are very analytical, even in interactions with people, that's a strength that can make you a very lovable, trusty person if you don't make it creepy. It can help you provide balanced, reasonable, valuable insight to someone who is confiding in you for instance. People may trust you for avoiding saying pleasant but false things, which makes your pleasant feedback more trusty. You'll find pleasant but true stuff to say anyway, thanks to your problem-solving mindset. I also spend a lot of time with various people (most of them not being programmers) and going outside, and that's also a very important aspect of who I am. Programming does not prevent this.

streamofdigits 5y ago

Makes you think the universe is a computer and other such obsessions

silverscania 5y ago
It might be
- marton78 5y ago
  It is! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-2P3MSZrBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-2P3MSZrBM
kbrtalan 5y ago
Stephen Wolfram, is that you?

sdeep27 5y ago

I think it's a great question, and one that specialists of all fields should ask themselves (-> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9formation_professionnelle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9formation_professionnel... ). As a solution, everyone will find different things that work for them, but doing things that have no relation physically/mentally to work (screen time, high logic use, software related problems, sitting) and essentially are on the opposite end of the spectrum, like hiking, swimming, tennis have helped for me.

amar-laksh 5y ago
Thank you so much for the term! This is exactly what I was looking for in order to start a deep dive that hopefully will help with Déformation professionnelle! :D

swayvil 5y ago

Speaking as a meditation guy. When you spend a lot of time concentrating your attention (as we do when solving our engineering puzzles) you tend to stay concentrated. It becomes a lifestyle. And when you spend a lot of time concentrating on ideas, you tend to stay concentrated on ideas. Ideas are your world. But ideas are not the world. The world is infinitely larger. And concentration is brother to blindness. Which is to say, concentrating on X leads to ignoring Y, Z and Q. Pardon me if this is vague.

fvv 5y ago
don't worry it's not vague I think both types of thinking are needed, creativity can be suppressed by too much concentration or fatigue, but it certainly becomes more effective if nourished by the knowledge that concentration helps to obtain
mekkkkkk 5y ago
> Ideas are your world. Wow, I feel that this describes me perfectly. I've never considered it before, but I tend to think in hypotheticals, generalized broad solutions or abstract concepts. I rarely spend brain power thinking of practical or tangible things. Maybe this is a consequence of (or reinforced by) programming since an early age. It has certainly taken it's toll. I'm always the one that forgets social occasions, leaves a mess and have sub-par social skills. My mind is always "in the clouds" so to speak.
myfavoritedog 5y ago
Meditation is an amazing thing. Its impact on your mind and your understanding of your mind can be profound. Sadly, many of the people who could most use the practice find the whole concept to be laughable.

siva7 5y ago

This is a good topic and vastly underappreciated. It’s a career where you should closely listen to your body and have an active lifestyle due to the sedentary nature of this career. When it doesn’t feel right stop for the day and look after yourself. Do some sport, meet friends. If it doesn’t help, change jobs. Never let someone above abuse you. Otherwise your health will start to suffer in the years coming.

deleted 5y ago

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amar-laksh 5y ago

It's so telling that most of the comments here are either: cautionary tales or negative effects. I sure feel young and naive in this audience.

tluyben2 5y ago
Everyone who has programmed full-time for a good number of years will have had some of the negative effects, even though many go in loving programming itself. Things around programming, mostly the very things that make programming a practical skill, like making money, using frameworks and libraries, deadlines etc can make it a horrorshow. If I just work on little fun projects no one will ever see, I am that boy from 40 years ago again who loved every second of writing software.

adflux 5y ago

Losing people skills. Not running into many women in your place of work. Your group of friends consisting of mostly (programming) men, who struggle to meet or even talk to women.

amar-laksh 5y ago
I've found talking to myself out loud while coding kinda helps with that.
gibbonsrcool 5y ago
This hit close to home. I don't think it's exclusive to programmers. I think this is happening in all industries, we just see it to a greater degree. Everyone's aware of polarization in politics, but I think it's happening to race, gender, and any other culturally distinct segment of humanity. With all this increased connectedness, we're distilling into groups that are like-minded, politically and otherwise. I went to an all boys school. I believe it was terrible for social development and made it hard to relate to women. When I see that same-sex education is on the rise I feel we're making a big mistake.
- hsuduebc2 5y ago
  I actually started dating after I left university when I was twenty one years old. Till that moment I was drinking monster and playing dota most of the time while occasionally program something. Sad thing is I was terrible in that game.

hsuduebc2 5y ago

Are there any positives?

agentcoops 5y ago

I've discussed the topic of "aphantasia" (the inability to form mental images [0]) with programmers at various jobs as well as with non-developer friends. It's certainly anecdata, but it's always been curious to me that I've only ever heard engineers identify with this condition -- and more frequently than the understood likelihood of it within the general population would lead me to expect. So, again, not a known neurological effect of programming, but an interesting correlation I've observed between many of the best programmers I've known and the condition of aphantasia. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

ryandvm 5y ago
Interesting. I'm a software developer and I've only recently become aware that I seem to be deficient in this area. For example, I can imagine the concept of particular person's face (shape, features, etc.), but there's not really a visual aspect to it in my mind's eye. Of course, it's kind of hard to figure out if what you imagine is what somebody else imagines.
agentcoops 5y ago
Coincidentally, within the original 1880 study [0] that first grappled with the phenomena it was most highly-correlated with scientists. He concludes that: "scientific men as a class have feeble powers of visual representation... My own conclusion is, that an over-readiness to perceive clear mental pictures is antagonistic to the acquirement of habits of highly generalised and abstract thought." [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20160416064610/http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20160416064610/http://psychclass...

ryandvm 5y ago

I'll tell you what, it'll aggravate any latent imposter syndrome you may be dealing with...

mbar84 5y ago

Who knows about correlation or causation, but programming and humility go together. Training people to always ask the questions: - How do I know that this is true? - What would otherwise have to be true for this conclusion to follow? - How can I bisect this process to test a hypothesis? So much wishful thinking and jumping to conclusions could be avoided if programming (and debugging more specifically) is a training to viscerally understand the scientific method.

tompazourek 5y ago
Humility is a great personality trait, but from my experience, programmers are unfortunately rarely humble.

rajangdavis 5y ago

Anecdotally, it makes it easier to map disparate things into something more structured. I would rather have spaghetti code than a spaghetti brain. Problem solving is dominant in my way of thinking which can be good or bad depending on the context. It's helpful for giving advice but terrible from an empathetic and listening standpoint. On the negative side, I have hard time reading emotional tone in text. It does not aid in communication nor soft/social skills.

nescioquid 5y ago

I read a about a study which considered how scientists and engineers who wrote code thought about their programs. The scientists considered their code as an extension of their own thinking, whereas engineers were mainly preoccupied with how the code could fail. There is probably also a virtuous cycle which reinforces how the scientist and engineer view their code, so it may be hard to untangle how much of that thought pattern was "innate" vs learned. I think your question is interesting and I wonder if it may depend (in part) on one's motivations for writing software.

civilized 5y ago
> I read a about a study which considered how scientists and engineers who wrote code thought about their programs. The scientists considered their code as an extension of their own thinking, whereas engineers were mainly preoccupied with how the code could fail. This makes sense when you consider why they're writing the code. Scientists use code as an electronic brain to answer scientific questions that are too complicated to answer mentally or with pen and paper. Engineers create services that don't necessarily answer scientific questions, but do useful work and need to be reliable. There is a substantial intersection though: for example, Google provides services that answer interesting/scientific questions, like "what are people saying on the internet" and "the frequency of words in books over time", while also being thoroughly engineered for performance and reliability.

xyzzy21 5y ago

Sure: you get more rational, logical and objective compared to "normies". This is 100% a good thing and an improvement over the average person. It's part of why more successful CEOs et al. have engineering background than liberal arts. There's also an effect on couples - my mother became radically more rational thanks to living with my father, an ME. The other aspect: you don't put up with bullshit as readily especially of the propaganda/lying forms so common today.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
Incredibly ironic comment

rramadass 5y ago

Brain and Autonomic Nervous System activity measurement in Software Engineering: A Systematic Literature review : https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0164121221000431 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016412122... Check the "References" section on the above for a list of papers.

rajacombinator 5y ago

Leads to a massively inflated estimation of one’s intelligence from solving basic logic problems.

taphangum 5y ago

There was an interesting thread about this on Twitter a while ago: https://twitter.com/PlanFlowDev/status/1317680078734696448 https://twitter.com/PlanFlowDev/status/1317680078734696448