The late Bob Wallace (Microsoft) experimented with low dose psychedelics as aid to programming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Wallace http://en.wikipedia.or

The late Bob Wallace (Microsoft) experimented with low dose psychedelics as aid to programming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Wallace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Wallace Undoubtedly there are more, but they keep understandably silent about it. Even more interesting would be (to me) programmers who would use meditative practices. Techniques - or better named attitudes - like mindfulness, self-awareness, the ability to take a step back to look at the bigger picture also aid in all areas of life. I was presently surprised to hear someone talk about mindfulness in relation to programming on a developer conference (Arrrrcamp): http://beatimpostorsyndrome.net/actions.html http://beatimpostorsyndrome.net/actions.html About other programmers, I think it's telling "Why the luck stiff" referred to John Lilly's metaprogramming of the mind in his famous kaleidoscopic Ruby guide page 107: "You might be inclined to think that metaprogramming is another hacker word and was first overheard in private phone calls between fax machines. Honest to God, I am here to tell you that it is stranger than that. Metaprogramming began with taking drugs in the company of dolphins." "We learn. But first we learn to learn. We setup programming in our mind which is the pathway to further programming. (Lilly is largely talking about programming the brain and the nervous system, which he collectively called the biocomputer.) Lilly’s metaprogramming was more about feeding yourself imagery, reinventing yourself, all that. This sort of thinking links directly to folks out there who dabble in shamanism, wave their hands over tarot cards and wake up early for karate class. I guess you could say metaprogramming is New Age, but it’s all settled down recently into a sleeping bag with plain old nerdiness. (If you got here from a Google search for “C++ Metaprogramming”, stick around, but I only ask that you burn those neural pathways that originally invoked the search. Many thanks.)" For sure mushrooms and psylocybin are unsuitable for programming, but low doses of cocaine, acid or 2C-* might have their value. The best programmer however learns to meta-program and hack his mind without chemicals.