7 ms·

An observational study of programming and cannabis intoxication

57 points by zkirby 3y ago

zkirby 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
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Mountain_Skies 3y ago
Guess the Ballmer Peak will remain the domain of alcohol.
- kelseyfrog 3y ago
  Stimulants remain an under-researched, potential gold mine.
  - candiddevmike 3y ago
    Most of the NYC financial district runs on some variant of Adderall
  - zkirby 3y ago
    I'm also curious to see a study focused on psychoactive substances considering their proven track record of 'enhancing creativity'. It's also well known that early silicon valley was filled with microdosing enthusiasts.
- shrubble 3y ago
  Ballmer Peak for alcohol. "Spicoli Peak" for cannabis, perhaps?
  - replygirl 3y ago
    hey buds, let's optimize!
- barbazoo 3y ago
  I imagine the Seth Rogan peak is probably at a very low dose. Anything more than a micro dose doesn’t work, at least for me.
ornornor 3y ago
I think more research is needed. Happy to help.
permo-w 3y ago
could have called it "hashed"
- sitkack 3y ago
  That opportunity was not lost. Hashing it Out? Understanding Psychoactive Substance Use in Programming https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y84r9So2bPA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y84r9So2bPA
permo-w 3y ago
in my personal experience, cannabis makes me significantly more motivated to program, but significantly less competent at it
candiddevmike 3y ago
> Second, our larger programming tasks were taken the LeetCode repository of skills-based interview questions. These questions may not be indicative of industrial practice (Behroozi et al., 2019). This is partially mitigated by the fact that they are indicative of programming tasks people carry out and study for in the hiring process. It doesn't seem like they tested "boring" 9-5 programming, or programming net new features.
- replygirl 3y ago
  in other words: if you get high enough, you can fool yourself into thinking leetcode matters for more than 30 minutes at a time
- gremlinsinc 3y ago
  they should have tested building out some crud app in their preferred stack. leet code is hard if you're not high, and it's mentally challenging since every question is a new high complexity issue where normal code you might have a spot your stuck in, but the rest is easy to finagle.
dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
Roughly speaking, yes, the short term memory loss is particularly problematic, but depending on the task you can definitely be somewhat productive.
DinaCoder99 3y ago
This is why you need to make a point to interview stoned to set expectations appropriately.
perihelions 3y ago
- "enhances creativity and focus" Wait, how do you make cannabis enhance task focus? I'm unfamiliar
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  In my experience cannabis has bimodal impact based on your individual biology. In my personal case it is measurably and consistently transformative for focus, opennness and creativity. To the extent that it basically feels like magic at this point and I’ve only really been working with cannabis for a couple years. Other people it just seems to put to sleep I’m exceptionally rigorous with my dosing and have experimented with terpenes/cannabinoid profiles to the extent where I know the relative responses I should expect are more or less deterministic. To be clear though I am not making a comment on the study, I would generally suggest that specific task focus is impaired. Its more of a question of, what aspect of your mindset is holding you back from performance. If you need to be exceptionally detailed oriented like a surgeon then you should definitely not be high, but if you’re framing out the logic for a protobuf interpreter, you might actually work faster
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- delichon 3y ago
  I once got stoned and watched a washing machine wash a load from start to finish. Utterly fascinating and no way I'd have that focus unaltered. It's not clear whether it was a good use of time though.
  - nomoreusernames 3y ago
    [dead]
  - perihelions 3y ago
    Yeah, but you can translate that into constructive focus on the level of normal high-level tasks such as programming, or reading, or mathematics or music or things of that sort?
epolanski 3y ago
I have coded many times when high (very rarely on somebody's dime, but it may have happened during Covid few times): you end up doing very little. Occasionally you'll have some crazy idea and follow it, the kind of ideas that you don't have normally. But in general your productivity will be very low and results poor. Don't do any kind of drugs or alcohol if you need your brain to be sharp. It's nonsense.
- gremlinsinc 3y ago
  that's me on a normal day without ADHD meds... and even then if I'm in a depressive funk, I can't think for shit. Hyper focus though can be glorious and make me feel like a 10x programmer for a few days lol..
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - epolanski 3y ago
    When did you start taking adhd meds? I've noticed many many americans start as children and then basically can't function as adults without meds. This is very rare in Europe.
- mass_and_energy 3y ago
  Hear hear, if you think you're coding better when you're stoned, you're only thinking that when you're stoned. Studies have shown that while cannabis makes you think you're more creative, it actually makes you less creative. This, combined with losing train of thought and having to reread code to find your place before you zoned out makes for a whole lot of wasted time. And it churns out the kind of code you revisit and think "how did this take me 2 hours?". It's a libation, it doesn't mix with work plain and simple.
  - epolanski 3y ago
    I didn't say I code better when stoned, I literally said it's not a good idea. I said that I end up doing stuff that I usually don't, that's a different thing.
Etheryte 3y ago
Can't recall where I read this off the top of my head, but wasn't a similar idea tested with musicians? If memory serves correct, the results were that while high, the musicians thought what they were making was great, but when they later revisited it when sober, they thought it was rubbish.
- cynicalsecurity 3y ago
  It was some study about usage of cocaine. That's why using drugs is really stupid, they don't enhance your capabilities, they simply give you an illusion of that.
  - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    Different drugs are different. Lumping them all together is dangerous: - Kids who discover that one wasn't a big deal will then be motivated to try others and see what else they were lied to about (I did, got around to most of my checklist too). - Taboo about drugs in general prevents harm-mitigating conversations from happening that might protect someone from one specific drug or another (I turned out ok because of conversations like that).
    - hyperadvanced 3y ago
      I really really really don’t like the “ideas are harmful” bent of your comment. Saying “drugs are bad” doesn’t harm anyone, even if you disagree, or think that it’s reductive or off base (because it is). Kids who grow up in homes where “harm mitigation” include sanctioned marijuana and alcohol use have worse outcomes than those who don’t.
      - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
        Harm mitigation isn't about sanctioning anything, it's just about recognizing that sometimes prohibition doesn't work and not making things worse in those cases. It's about not wrecking somebody's teeth by confiscating their pacifier while they're rolling. It's about not causing overdoses by limiting access to milligram scales (because trying to use a kitchen scale to measure a dose is dangerous). It's about creating an environment where people won't lie to you if you express concern about their habits. Most drug problems are poor dopamine hygiene or mental health issues of some other kind. Let's focus on that instead of celebrating that somebody is "off the hard stuff" while the root cause remains and wrecks their life through a video game addiction. If you're not seeing the harms caused by overbroad vilification of drugs in general it's because the people around you who are struggling with a substance problem are hiding it from you due to your attitude about such things. And if they're hiding from you, you can't help them.
deleted 3y ago
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jesselawson 3y ago
All good and great but I think it’s a bit misleading. The participants were asked to do LeetCode—which limits this study to the suggested effects of cannabis on arbitrary and abstract programming tasks.
- emsy 3y ago
  From personal experience, logic skills are significantly impaired, but when I’m stuck on a problem and high I can think of „out of the box“ solutions more easily that I later implement.
- bazil376 3y ago
  I’d probably spark one up if I got asked to do leetcode in an interview
- latency-guy2 3y ago
  In terms of programming, LeetCode is quite likely to be harder than your day job. Most developers mid level and upwards from majority of the companies I have held a role in are not spending the majority of their day coding, they're writing specs, doing meetings, providing guidance to their junior counterparts, assisting in support tickets on call, and if you had time, documentation. You were quite lucky to meet 30% time in any day/week/month/year spent writing code. The vast majority of developers were also not developing new, foundational code either. So I disagree, its not misleading, its actually relevant, and arguably even more mentally stimulating than all the cruft that you actually do every day. At the least you're reusing and thinking about all the DSA knowledge everyone has lost touch with from decades ago.
  - gopher_space 3y ago
    > In terms of programming, LeetCode is quite likely to be harder than your day job. It's orthogonal to your day job. The "cruft" you talk about is how we remove ambiguity and fill in details so that work isn't a series of free-floating gedanken experiments. If you're able to apply codified knowledge like LeetCode to a programming task it means someone else has already done the heavy lifting. We "lost touch" with DSA knowledge because it turns out that it's easier to work things up from base principles using the scientific method than memorizing crap that worked for the vacuum tube generation. We don't *need* a reductive LUT approach to the process anymore.
nomoreusernames 3y ago
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cfr2023 3y ago
It does seem that people would wrongly associate the artificial influx of positive/warm feelings coming from a cannabis with increased task performance. Not unlike how people overestimate their own strength when drinking alcohol etc. However, if it decreases their performance but improves their feelings towards the work, might that still be a net positive? In other words, if you are going to be a little more pokey and error prone, but on the whole more eager to work and more resistant to burn out, that could be better than a non-cannabis user that makes fewer errors, while continuously stressing out and thinking about changing jobs.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  Better for who?
  - doktrin 3y ago
    I suppose there’s no certainty when dealing with a vague hypothetical, but probably both employer and employee? It’s not as if burnout and quitting is in anyone’s interest.
  - cfr2023 3y ago
    Everyone? It's about the real and hidden costs. If your employees are stressed to the point of burnout and are turning over every few months, do you think new trainees will make more or less errors than experienced employees under the influence of cannabis? Will their training costs be more or less than the errors made by the person using cannabis? As the employee, if you are stressed out and hitting a wall, and suddenly imbibing cannabis motivates you to continue working more than 10 cups of coffee would, but without the jitters, that seems like a better outcome than simply feeling terrible and also not getting the job done.
- temp0826 3y ago
  Is it better to medicate than make steps ("thinking about changing jobs") towards being happy sober? I'm not against people using cannabis, I just don't think this is the right frame. It shouldn't be a bandaid for being in a bad situation and it's kind of sad if one would give up their aspirations for betterment because the high masks them caring enough about it.
antonvs 3y ago
> There remains a need for an empirical understanding of the true impacts of cannabis on programming. For some definition of "need", I suppose.
janis1234 3y ago
Don't really need a study for something you can figure out fairly easily on your own. I tried to smoke and program probably 3 times and results were always the same. Significantly less productive. Started working on tasks not aligned with larger goal. Had many ideas that seemed amazing at the time and later found out to be dumb. In that sense it is creative enhancement in that you consider more idea, but just in general most ideas are dumb. Difficult to stay focused on the most important task and makes me wonder more. Loss of focus. The real question is: How do I use cannabis correctly? What can it actually do for you? From my experience smoking once every 2 months has net benefit... It cannot help you program but it can help you higher level ideas related to programming. It can answer the why better than it can answer the how. It can be a reset and motivation and prevent you from burn out even if you are working more than 60 hrs a week. But it is dangerous in that you want to get the relief constantly, so from my experience once every 2 months is fine.
- deleted 3y ago
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- ivansavz 3y ago
  > The real question is: How do I use cannabis correctly? What can it actually do for you? Excellent questions, and I think this is the right way to approach this substance: as a scientific inquiry, not a vice to feel ashamed of, or a godsend magic substance that solves all problems. > smoking once every 2 months has net benefit Strong agree. Specifically, what I've observed is after long periods of productivity with the brain "loaded" with a lot of context, a joint can help uncover lateral connections and find new perspectives and approaches. However when the brain is "empty" as on a Monday morning, smoking is just counter-productive, since there are no connections to be made, no new perspectives to be had, and the lateral thinking just means loss of productivity (focus on the wrong things). The fundamental difficulty is with the "once" part of the plan. It's very easy to stay in the smoking loop after the first day of use (get the relief constantly like you say), and it can turn into a week of use. For many people, the risk of losing weeks to substance use loop + one more week to get back to baseline mood might end up as net negative, despite the initial benefits.
stodor89 3y ago
Aaand the "least surprising study in the world" award goes to...
Stratoscope 3y ago
Back in the day, maybe 30-40 years ago, when possession of any amount of cannabis could get you thrown in jail, we needed a code phrase to use when we called a friend to ask if they had any. So we would ask: "Do you have any programmer's fuel?" Also related, the phrase "fire an event" is a cannabis reference: https://retool.com/visual-basic https://retool.com/visual-basic
- mistrial9 3y ago
  captain crunch would say "execute a nine-N instruction".. ask Woz! also the frat guy coders at Apple would openly hate on Andy Hertzfeld, who insufficiently hid his affection for an occasional toke in Palo Alto
  - Stratoscope 3y ago
    I was friends with John Draper (Captain Crunch) in the 1970s. But never as close a friend as he wanted me to be! (Anyone who knew John or the stories about him may know what I am referring to.) He usually had some decent pot, so when I ran out, I would sometimes visit him at his Berkeley apartment and we would smoke and do some Forth hacking. I never heard about the "nine-N instruction" though. I ran into John again at the Computer History Museum's Homebrew Computer Club reunion in 2013. When I re-introduced myself, he didn't seem to remember me at first. Then his eyes lit up and he asked, "Did we work out?" https://www.flickr.com/photos/geary/10861963196/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/geary/10861963196/
    - mistrial9 3y ago
      ... after he moved back to California from Hawaii
    - DonHopkins 3y ago
      You and I discussed this before -- the phrase Draper used was "Let's execute some 1802 instructions". And yes he creepily and obnoxiously insisted on back exercises with me too. Yech! Beware. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair Back in the days of the SFRaves scene, I and others would always keep some tobacco on us a "John Draper Repellent" in case he saddled up and tried to schmooze some weed. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26040778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26040778 Stratoscope on Feb 5, 2021 | parent | context | favorite | on: Dunfield 6809 Portable > Sign extension (SEX instruction!) We were definitely into SEX in those days. In the late 1970s I was working at Tymshare, and one of my tasks was maintaining the assembler and linker. (I think this was on the PDP-10 but it could have been another machine.) We wanted a "weak external" feature, somewhat akin to a "weak reference" in modern languages: instead of failing to build if the external symbol was not defined in another object file, it would link OK but leave a null value that you would check at runtime. The assembly directive for a regular external was EXTERN. I thought of calling the weak external WEXTERN but that looked silly. So I decided to call them Secondary Externals, with the directive being SEXTERN. And as far as I know, no one complained! cjak on Feb 6, 2021 | next [–] I just finished a project that introduced features for both signal injection and signal extraction. So now we can enjoy both SIN and SEX, sometimes at the same time. DonHopkins on Feb 6, 2021 | prev [–] The 1802 had a SET X REGISTER (SEX) instruction, as well as a GET HIGH (GHI) instruction. https://www.atarimagazines.com/computeii/issue3/page52.php https://www.atarimagazines.com/computeii/issue3/page52.php John Draper (Cap'n Crunch) once creepily invited a friend of mine (who was a strapping young lad at the time) into the back of a van to "execute some 1802 instructions". Stratoscope on Feb 6, 2021 | parent [–] Ah yes, I knew John well in those days. Not nearly as well as he wanted to know me! We used to drive around in his VW microbus finding interesting payphones. Then when he was learning to program, I visited him once in a while at his place in Berkeley to help him with his code. My motivation was that he usually had some decent weed. Then one time he asked if I wanted to "work out". That lasted about two minutes until I found out what he really meant. Many years later, I ran into John at the Homebrew Reunion. He didn't recognize me at first, so I reintroduced myself and mentioned how we used to hang out and write code. His eyes lit up and he asked, "did we work out?" https://www.flickr.com/photos/geary/10861963196/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/geary/10861963196/
WhatIsAModel 3y ago
I'm high af right now and I'm not getting shit done.
- dylan604 3y ago
  Which is precisely how to make best use of a Saturday.
mistrial9 3y ago
next up - musical performance skills impacted by inebriation study
deleted 3y ago
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therobots927 3y ago
I credit cannabis edibles with burnout prevention and focus improvement. It seems likely that I have ADHD, and for whatever reason edibles keep me motivated in a similar way to adderall. I write SQL daily, if that’s considered coding in this context. Bugs are not really a concern with SQL, I triple check my results to make sure I’m not making calculation mistakes. One thing it doesn’t always help with is task avoidance (if it’s not something I want to do), pure stimulants are better for that. Everyone is different, but I have zero plans to alter course, edibles make my job more interesting and much less boring. I highly recommend Wyld brand sativa gummies.
beezle 3y ago
It really depends upon the dosage. If you get completely baked, of course you aren't going to be very productive. However, a lower end dosage can have a relaxing effect and sometimes stimulate ideas that might not be considered otherwise. The same is probably true of booze. A drink or two might have net positive effects but drink a 750 and you aren't going to do very much of anything good.
joshbuddy 3y ago
Code while high, debug while sober. Best of both worlds!
ivansavz 3y ago
I'm wondering to what extend the positive productivity that people report when working high are due to the momentary mental relief from psychological pain (anxiety, depression, negative self thoughts) and the general mood enhancement. Such positive effects could outweigh the decline in cognitive performance observed in this paper. For example, let's say that being high has a -0.2 effect on cognitive performance, but a +0.5 effect on alleviating psychological pain, then the user is still +0.3 overall. Too bad treating psychological issues through substance use is not a winning strategy in the long term (due to habituation), but maybe temporary and occasional substance use can be a helpful stepping stone toward finding more sustainable alternative strategies, although the dangers of addiction are a big risk too, so it could go either way.

57 points by zkirby 3y ago

zkirby 3y ago

[dead]

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Mountain_Skies 3y ago

Guess the Ballmer Peak will remain the domain of alcohol.

kelseyfrog 3y ago
Stimulants remain an under-researched, potential gold mine.
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  Most of the NYC financial district runs on some variant of Adderall
- zkirby 3y ago
  I'm also curious to see a study focused on psychoactive substances considering their proven track record of 'enhancing creativity'. It's also well known that early silicon valley was filled with microdosing enthusiasts.
shrubble 3y ago
Ballmer Peak for alcohol. "Spicoli Peak" for cannabis, perhaps?
- replygirl 3y ago
  hey buds, let's optimize!
barbazoo 3y ago
I imagine the Seth Rogan peak is probably at a very low dose. Anything more than a micro dose doesn’t work, at least for me.

ornornor 3y ago

I think more research is needed. Happy to help.

permo-w 3y ago

could have called it "hashed"

sitkack 3y ago
That opportunity was not lost. Hashing it Out? Understanding Psychoactive Substance Use in Programming https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y84r9So2bPA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y84r9So2bPA

permo-w 3y ago

in my personal experience, cannabis makes me significantly more motivated to program, but significantly less competent at it

candiddevmike 3y ago

> Second, our larger programming tasks were taken the LeetCode repository of skills-based interview questions. These questions may not be indicative of industrial practice (Behroozi et al., 2019). This is partially mitigated by the fact that they are indicative of programming tasks people carry out and study for in the hiring process. It doesn't seem like they tested "boring" 9-5 programming, or programming net new features.

replygirl 3y ago
in other words: if you get high enough, you can fool yourself into thinking leetcode matters for more than 30 minutes at a time
gremlinsinc 3y ago
they should have tested building out some crud app in their preferred stack. leet code is hard if you're not high, and it's mentally challenging since every question is a new high complexity issue where normal code you might have a spot your stuck in, but the rest is easy to finagle.

dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago

Roughly speaking, yes, the short term memory loss is particularly problematic, but depending on the task you can definitely be somewhat productive.

DinaCoder99 3y ago

This is why you need to make a point to interview stoned to set expectations appropriately.

perihelions 3y ago

- "enhances creativity and focus" Wait, how do you make cannabis enhance task focus? I'm unfamiliar

AndrewKemendo 3y ago
In my experience cannabis has bimodal impact based on your individual biology. In my personal case it is measurably and consistently transformative for focus, opennness and creativity. To the extent that it basically feels like magic at this point and I’ve only really been working with cannabis for a couple years. Other people it just seems to put to sleep I’m exceptionally rigorous with my dosing and have experimented with terpenes/cannabinoid profiles to the extent where I know the relative responses I should expect are more or less deterministic. To be clear though I am not making a comment on the study, I would generally suggest that specific task focus is impaired. Its more of a question of, what aspect of your mindset is holding you back from performance. If you need to be exceptionally detailed oriented like a surgeon then you should definitely not be high, but if you’re framing out the logic for a protobuf interpreter, you might actually work faster
- deleted 3y ago
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delichon 3y ago
I once got stoned and watched a washing machine wash a load from start to finish. Utterly fascinating and no way I'd have that focus unaltered. It's not clear whether it was a good use of time though.
- nomoreusernames 3y ago
  [dead]
- perihelions 3y ago
  Yeah, but you can translate that into constructive focus on the level of normal high-level tasks such as programming, or reading, or mathematics or music or things of that sort?

epolanski 3y ago

I have coded many times when high (very rarely on somebody's dime, but it may have happened during Covid few times): you end up doing very little. Occasionally you'll have some crazy idea and follow it, the kind of ideas that you don't have normally. But in general your productivity will be very low and results poor. Don't do any kind of drugs or alcohol if you need your brain to be sharp. It's nonsense.

gremlinsinc 3y ago
that's me on a normal day without ADHD meds... and even then if I'm in a depressive funk, I can't think for shit. Hyper focus though can be glorious and make me feel like a 10x programmer for a few days lol..
- deleted 3y ago
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- epolanski 3y ago
  When did you start taking adhd meds? I've noticed many many americans start as children and then basically can't function as adults without meds. This is very rare in Europe.
mass_and_energy 3y ago
Hear hear, if you think you're coding better when you're stoned, you're only thinking that when you're stoned. Studies have shown that while cannabis makes you think you're more creative, it actually makes you less creative. This, combined with losing train of thought and having to reread code to find your place before you zoned out makes for a whole lot of wasted time. And it churns out the kind of code you revisit and think "how did this take me 2 hours?". It's a libation, it doesn't mix with work plain and simple.
- epolanski 3y ago
  I didn't say I code better when stoned, I literally said it's not a good idea. I said that I end up doing stuff that I usually don't, that's a different thing.

Etheryte 3y ago

Can't recall where I read this off the top of my head, but wasn't a similar idea tested with musicians? If memory serves correct, the results were that while high, the musicians thought what they were making was great, but when they later revisited it when sober, they thought it was rubbish.

cynicalsecurity 3y ago
It was some study about usage of cocaine. That's why using drugs is really stupid, they don't enhance your capabilities, they simply give you an illusion of that.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  Different drugs are different. Lumping them all together is dangerous: - Kids who discover that one wasn't a big deal will then be motivated to try others and see what else they were lied to about (I did, got around to most of my checklist too). - Taboo about drugs in general prevents harm-mitigating conversations from happening that might protect someone from one specific drug or another (I turned out ok because of conversations like that).
  - hyperadvanced 3y ago
    I really really really don’t like the “ideas are harmful” bent of your comment. Saying “drugs are bad” doesn’t harm anyone, even if you disagree, or think that it’s reductive or off base (because it is). Kids who grow up in homes where “harm mitigation” include sanctioned marijuana and alcohol use have worse outcomes than those who don’t.
    - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
      Harm mitigation isn't about sanctioning anything, it's just about recognizing that sometimes prohibition doesn't work and not making things worse in those cases. It's about not wrecking somebody's teeth by confiscating their pacifier while they're rolling. It's about not causing overdoses by limiting access to milligram scales (because trying to use a kitchen scale to measure a dose is dangerous). It's about creating an environment where people won't lie to you if you express concern about their habits. Most drug problems are poor dopamine hygiene or mental health issues of some other kind. Let's focus on that instead of celebrating that somebody is "off the hard stuff" while the root cause remains and wrecks their life through a video game addiction. If you're not seeing the harms caused by overbroad vilification of drugs in general it's because the people around you who are struggling with a substance problem are hiding it from you due to your attitude about such things. And if they're hiding from you, you can't help them.

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jesselawson 3y ago

All good and great but I think it’s a bit misleading. The participants were asked to do LeetCode—which limits this study to the suggested effects of cannabis on arbitrary and abstract programming tasks.

emsy 3y ago
From personal experience, logic skills are significantly impaired, but when I’m stuck on a problem and high I can think of „out of the box“ solutions more easily that I later implement.
bazil376 3y ago
I’d probably spark one up if I got asked to do leetcode in an interview
latency-guy2 3y ago
In terms of programming, LeetCode is quite likely to be harder than your day job. Most developers mid level and upwards from majority of the companies I have held a role in are not spending the majority of their day coding, they're writing specs, doing meetings, providing guidance to their junior counterparts, assisting in support tickets on call, and if you had time, documentation. You were quite lucky to meet 30% time in any day/week/month/year spent writing code. The vast majority of developers were also not developing new, foundational code either. So I disagree, its not misleading, its actually relevant, and arguably even more mentally stimulating than all the cruft that you actually do every day. At the least you're reusing and thinking about all the DSA knowledge everyone has lost touch with from decades ago.
- gopher_space 3y ago
  > In terms of programming, LeetCode is quite likely to be harder than your day job. It's orthogonal to your day job. The "cruft" you talk about is how we remove ambiguity and fill in details so that work isn't a series of free-floating gedanken experiments. If you're able to apply codified knowledge like LeetCode to a programming task it means someone else has already done the heavy lifting. We "lost touch" with DSA knowledge because it turns out that it's easier to work things up from base principles using the scientific method than memorizing crap that worked for the vacuum tube generation. We don't *need* a reductive LUT approach to the process anymore.

nomoreusernames 3y ago

[dead]

cfr2023 3y ago

It does seem that people would wrongly associate the artificial influx of positive/warm feelings coming from a cannabis with increased task performance. Not unlike how people overestimate their own strength when drinking alcohol etc. However, if it decreases their performance but improves their feelings towards the work, might that still be a net positive? In other words, if you are going to be a little more pokey and error prone, but on the whole more eager to work and more resistant to burn out, that could be better than a non-cannabis user that makes fewer errors, while continuously stressing out and thinking about changing jobs.

wahnfrieden 3y ago
Better for who?
- doktrin 3y ago
  I suppose there’s no certainty when dealing with a vague hypothetical, but probably both employer and employee? It’s not as if burnout and quitting is in anyone’s interest.
- cfr2023 3y ago
  Everyone? It's about the real and hidden costs. If your employees are stressed to the point of burnout and are turning over every few months, do you think new trainees will make more or less errors than experienced employees under the influence of cannabis? Will their training costs be more or less than the errors made by the person using cannabis? As the employee, if you are stressed out and hitting a wall, and suddenly imbibing cannabis motivates you to continue working more than 10 cups of coffee would, but without the jitters, that seems like a better outcome than simply feeling terrible and also not getting the job done.
temp0826 3y ago
Is it better to medicate than make steps ("thinking about changing jobs") towards being happy sober? I'm not against people using cannabis, I just don't think this is the right frame. It shouldn't be a bandaid for being in a bad situation and it's kind of sad if one would give up their aspirations for betterment because the high masks them caring enough about it.

antonvs 3y ago

> There remains a need for an empirical understanding of the true impacts of cannabis on programming. For some definition of "need", I suppose.

janis1234 3y ago

Don't really need a study for something you can figure out fairly easily on your own. I tried to smoke and program probably 3 times and results were always the same. Significantly less productive. Started working on tasks not aligned with larger goal. Had many ideas that seemed amazing at the time and later found out to be dumb. In that sense it is creative enhancement in that you consider more idea, but just in general most ideas are dumb. Difficult to stay focused on the most important task and makes me wonder more. Loss of focus. The real question is: How do I use cannabis correctly? What can it actually do for you? From my experience smoking once every 2 months has net benefit... It cannot help you program but it can help you higher level ideas related to programming. It can answer the why better than it can answer the how. It can be a reset and motivation and prevent you from burn out even if you are working more than 60 hrs a week. But it is dangerous in that you want to get the relief constantly, so from my experience once every 2 months is fine.

deleted 3y ago
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ivansavz 3y ago
> The real question is: How do I use cannabis correctly? What can it actually do for you? Excellent questions, and I think this is the right way to approach this substance: as a scientific inquiry, not a vice to feel ashamed of, or a godsend magic substance that solves all problems. > smoking once every 2 months has net benefit Strong agree. Specifically, what I've observed is after long periods of productivity with the brain "loaded" with a lot of context, a joint can help uncover lateral connections and find new perspectives and approaches. However when the brain is "empty" as on a Monday morning, smoking is just counter-productive, since there are no connections to be made, no new perspectives to be had, and the lateral thinking just means loss of productivity (focus on the wrong things). The fundamental difficulty is with the "once" part of the plan. It's very easy to stay in the smoking loop after the first day of use (get the relief constantly like you say), and it can turn into a week of use. For many people, the risk of losing weeks to substance use loop + one more week to get back to baseline mood might end up as net negative, despite the initial benefits.

stodor89 3y ago

Aaand the "least surprising study in the world" award goes to...

Stratoscope 3y ago

Back in the day, maybe 30-40 years ago, when possession of any amount of cannabis could get you thrown in jail, we needed a code phrase to use when we called a friend to ask if they had any. So we would ask: "Do you have any programmer's fuel?" Also related, the phrase "fire an event" is a cannabis reference: https://retool.com/visual-basic https://retool.com/visual-basic

mistrial9 3y ago
captain crunch would say "execute a nine-N instruction".. ask Woz! also the frat guy coders at Apple would openly hate on Andy Hertzfeld, who insufficiently hid his affection for an occasional toke in Palo Alto
- Stratoscope 3y ago
  I was friends with John Draper (Captain Crunch) in the 1970s. But never as close a friend as he wanted me to be! (Anyone who knew John or the stories about him may know what I am referring to.) He usually had some decent pot, so when I ran out, I would sometimes visit him at his Berkeley apartment and we would smoke and do some Forth hacking. I never heard about the "nine-N instruction" though. I ran into John again at the Computer History Museum's Homebrew Computer Club reunion in 2013. When I re-introduced myself, he didn't seem to remember me at first. Then his eyes lit up and he asked, "Did we work out?" https://www.flickr.com/photos/geary/10861963196/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/geary/10861963196/
  - mistrial9 3y ago
    ... after he moved back to California from Hawaii
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
    You and I discussed this before -- the phrase Draper used was "Let's execute some 1802 instructions". And yes he creepily and obnoxiously insisted on back exercises with me too. Yech! Beware. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair Back in the days of the SFRaves scene, I and others would always keep some tobacco on us a "John Draper Repellent" in case he saddled up and tried to schmooze some weed. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26040778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26040778 Stratoscope on Feb 5, 2021 | parent | context | favorite | on: Dunfield 6809 Portable > Sign extension (SEX instruction!) We were definitely into SEX in those days. In the late 1970s I was working at Tymshare, and one of my tasks was maintaining the assembler and linker. (I think this was on the PDP-10 but it could have been another machine.) We wanted a "weak external" feature, somewhat akin to a "weak reference" in modern languages: instead of failing to build if the external symbol was not defined in another object file, it would link OK but leave a null value that you would check at runtime. The assembly directive for a regular external was EXTERN. I thought of calling the weak external WEXTERN but that looked silly. So I decided to call them Secondary Externals, with the directive being SEXTERN. And as far as I know, no one complained! cjak on Feb 6, 2021 | next [–] I just finished a project that introduced features for both signal injection and signal extraction. So now we can enjoy both SIN and SEX, sometimes at the same time. DonHopkins on Feb 6, 2021 | prev [–] The 1802 had a SET X REGISTER (SEX) instruction, as well as a GET HIGH (GHI) instruction. https://www.atarimagazines.com/computeii/issue3/page52.php https://www.atarimagazines.com/computeii/issue3/page52.php John Draper (Cap'n Crunch) once creepily invited a friend of mine (who was a strapping young lad at the time) into the back of a van to "execute some 1802 instructions". Stratoscope on Feb 6, 2021 | parent [–] Ah yes, I knew John well in those days. Not nearly as well as he wanted to know me! We used to drive around in his VW microbus finding interesting payphones. Then when he was learning to program, I visited him once in a while at his place in Berkeley to help him with his code. My motivation was that he usually had some decent weed. Then one time he asked if I wanted to "work out". That lasted about two minutes until I found out what he really meant. Many years later, I ran into John at the Homebrew Reunion. He didn't recognize me at first, so I reintroduced myself and mentioned how we used to hang out and write code. His eyes lit up and he asked, "did we work out?" https://www.flickr.com/photos/geary/10861963196/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/geary/10861963196/

WhatIsAModel 3y ago

I'm high af right now and I'm not getting shit done.

dylan604 3y ago
Which is precisely how to make best use of a Saturday.

mistrial9 3y ago

next up - musical performance skills impacted by inebriation study

deleted 3y ago

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therobots927 3y ago

I credit cannabis edibles with burnout prevention and focus improvement. It seems likely that I have ADHD, and for whatever reason edibles keep me motivated in a similar way to adderall. I write SQL daily, if that’s considered coding in this context. Bugs are not really a concern with SQL, I triple check my results to make sure I’m not making calculation mistakes. One thing it doesn’t always help with is task avoidance (if it’s not something I want to do), pure stimulants are better for that. Everyone is different, but I have zero plans to alter course, edibles make my job more interesting and much less boring. I highly recommend Wyld brand sativa gummies.

beezle 3y ago

It really depends upon the dosage. If you get completely baked, of course you aren't going to be very productive. However, a lower end dosage can have a relaxing effect and sometimes stimulate ideas that might not be considered otherwise. The same is probably true of booze. A drink or two might have net positive effects but drink a 750 and you aren't going to do very much of anything good.

joshbuddy 3y ago

Code while high, debug while sober. Best of both worlds!

ivansavz 3y ago

I'm wondering to what extend the positive productivity that people report when working high are due to the momentary mental relief from psychological pain (anxiety, depression, negative self thoughts) and the general mood enhancement. Such positive effects could outweigh the decline in cognitive performance observed in this paper. For example, let's say that being high has a -0.2 effect on cognitive performance, but a +0.5 effect on alleviating psychological pain, then the user is still +0.3 overall. Too bad treating psychological issues through substance use is not a winning strategy in the long term (due to habituation), but maybe temporary and occasional substance use can be a helpful stepping stone toward finding more sustainable alternative strategies, although the dangers of addiction are a big risk too, so it could go either way.