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Have you ever coded while high?
If i hurt anyone by asking this question it is not what i meant. I just cant stop wondering what a coder could come up with while "high"?
- mrtron 19y agoI find I write my best code when I am extremely tired and working late into the night. Mind you, I need to have a good idea in my head already of how I want to solve the problem, but I write a whole chunk of code often in one evening (or all nighter). When I write code and am entirely awake, I often get bored or distracted, or keep trying to rethink ways to solve the problem better. I definitely can't code after a beer.
- rms 19y agoWeed makes me worse at doing anything that takes serious cognitive ability, except thinking of ideas -- but I need to wait until I am sober to actually evaluate the merit of said ideas. As far as coding, I have one friend who says he is great at coding while high and he is a terrible coder all around. I am hesitant to think that anyone is truly better at coding while high, because weed certainly impairs overall cognitive function, especially short term and working memory. However, I have corresponded with someone on this forum who has made something impressive and he says coding high sometimes lets him tackle problems that he has been stuck on for a while. But I really don't think he made most of his site while high. Coding on Kratom, on the other hand...
- russ 19y agoNice plug for your Kratom business ;-)
- deleted 19y ago[deleted]
- rms 19y agoKratom is a rare stimulant that makes you more productive. It is unfortunate that our culture chooses to only tolerate caffeine which makes you twitchy, and nicotine, which slowly kills you. Kratom is currently neither a food, drug, or herbal supplement which puts it in a weird legal wasteland. Kratom is usually consumed as a tea. It is very palatable when sweetened with sugar and contains healthy anti-oxidants[1]. One of the active alkaloids of kratom, 7-hydroxy mitragynine is an incredibly strong opiate, 17 times as strong as morphine[2]. Kratom has been further tested as a drug on your average variety of small mammals. This study is on a guinea pig, where they didn't get the 17x number but concluded that 7-hydroxy-mitragynine is a dose dependant antinociceptive that is stronger than morphine.[3] They do a follow up study demonstrating cross tolerance with morphine. [4] Erowid[5] is the authoritative list of studies[6] on the subject of kratom. You can read more than 50 personal experiences with kratom, mostly with regards to it as a recreational drug though some individuals there use it as a substitute for real opiates or to potentiate other drugs. Most of the negative experiences can be attributed to people incorrectly consuming kratom[7]. Kratom is properly consumed as a tea with lots of sugar and the extra kratom powder filtered out with a french press. Kratom is completely legal everywhere except some of its native Southeast Asia: Thailand, Burma, and Malaysia, and Australia[8]. It is legally grown in Indonesia and India, though I haven't found any real Mitragyna Speciosa sold out of India. Most of the guys on Ali Baba are selling fake kratom, except PH. All of the kratom on the market comes from this mystery world landowner who owns dozens of legal drug plantations in all the continents. If anyone could undercut him for one of his major products, the second supplier would make a lot of money because a successful international kratom operation could source kratom 100 fold cheaper than PH. This would require you to grow your own kratom, in a warm, wet climate or travel to Indonesia and give people money to take you to the kratom, which would probably work. Unfortunately, I don't have any contacts in Indonesia or anywhere else where Kratom is legally grown. Maybe one of these days I can take a sourcing trip. I'm not trying to push a drug here, I'm trying to tell the truth. This is a substance with a lot of potential and I would love to collaborate on research with anyone that is interested. [1]The antioxidant alkaloids in Cats Claw ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=15649507 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db... ) and Kratom ( http://www.erowid.org/plants/kratom/kratom_journal2.shtml http://www.erowid.org/plants/kratom/kratom_journal2.shtml ) are similar. I'll write up a comparison eventually but here are the raw sources for now. [2]http://www.thieme-connect.com/DOI/DOI?10.1055/s-2005-837822 http://www.thieme-connect.com/DOI/DOI?10.1055/s-2005-837822 [3]http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T99-4H40J48-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=215e6795bf74d94792757f1f32c8e3c5 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi... [4]http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T99-4H40J48-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=215e6795bf74d94792757f1f32c8e3c5 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi... [5]http://www.erowid.org/plants/kratom/kratom.shtml http://www.erowid.org/plants/kratom/kratom.shtml [6]http://www.erowid.org/plants/kratom/kratom_journal.shtml http://www.erowid.org/plants/kratom/kratom_journal.shtml [7]http://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=36154 http://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=36154 [8]http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/drugs_concern/kratom.htm http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/drugs_concern/kratom.htm
- yters 19y agoSo, are you a major user yourself? Even caffeine, which I use out of weakness and necessity, I worry about. Subjectively, it seems like my increased focus and lack of tiredness comes at a cost to my higher intellectual functions. No objective proof of this, though subjectivity counts for something. Has anyone here achieved good enough control over their body where they don't need this stuff? Have you found a significant difference between operating on and off drugs when going without sleep for long periods?
- rms 19y agoI would not recommend kratom or any stimulant as a substitute for sleep. The best thing for your productivity is natural sleep. For the purposes of productivity enhancement, I think kratom and coffee are best consumed during a day as slowly as possible... if you feel yourself getting tired or distracted, take a sip. I don't feel that kratom use hinders higher intellectual function in sub-opiating doses but this is difficult to measure. There is only one good pharmaceutical solution for suppressing tiredness without other side effects: Modafinil. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modafinil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modafinil This is an account of extreme Modafinil use and abuse. http://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=45423 http://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=45423
- ericb 19y agoI strongly recommend naps! It doubles the daily time when I can hit a flow state while coding, which is when I produce my best code. In terms of coding, I find the cloud that comes from tiredness to be worth always avoiding. I do this because coding's not like moving lumber where you're just slower if you're tired. Instead you'll move the lumber to the wrong place! If I'm not at-peak, I dedicate that time to grunt-work, research, but not coding. My newest approach is personal "sprints" where I ignore all distractions, set a big goal and race at it for 1-2 hours.
- nextmoveone 19y agoeinstein never slept, he only took naps several times a day.
- Zak 19y agoOnly on caffeine, though I have found that alcohol (number of drinks dependent on language) can help with debugging.
- rms 19y agoMore or less drinks for functional/mostly-functional languages?
- deleted 19y ago[deleted]
- deleted 19y ago[deleted]
- Zak 19y agoMore for anything obnoxious like PHP or IE Javascript incompatibilities. Fewer for things that are hard, but not evil (including functional languages).
- dcurtis 19y agoWhen does caffeine make you high? It just makes me jittery and easily agitated, so when I make a mistake I feel like throwing the computer out the window.
- deleted 19y ago[deleted]
- Zak 19y agoAside from developing a physical addiction, I respond well to caffeine. More of it generally makes me happy and stimulated.
- ingenium 19y agoI find that coding while high never produces good code. I've done it before, and while I can sit and code for a long time, I just make too many stupid mistakes. It takes me forever then to go back and figure out what I did wrong while high; I usually have to wait until I'm sober to debug it. However, the actual logic of the code usually makes sense and it works, it's just little things that I forget or simple errors in logic. The other problem is that while I can code more mundane code, anything that actually takes a lot of thought is just impossible. I can't remember all the things I'm trying to do and can't keep everything straight. This is just because weed basically destroys your short term memory. I recognize that weed may give you the motivation to code or give you insight into how to tackle a problem, but just be aware that you'll have to do a lot of debugging of the code after you come down. As rms said, kratom is a different story. I can code for hours on kratom and actually make very few mistakes.
- SwellJoe 19y agoCrap: This post, code produced while high, and all responses to this post (this response included).
- awt 19y agoI've found that drinking a beer or two and coding with loosened inhibitions allows me to take on riskier approaches to solving problems. Things that might ordinarily seem too hard or like too much work seem less so.
- chengmi 19y agoBallmer Peak: http://xkcd.com/323/ http://xkcd.com/323/
- rontr 19y agoLots of parentheses?
- jamiequint 19y agocan we please ban any comment or post with the word "kratom" on this site.
- deleted 19y ago[deleted]
- marcus 19y agoSo long as it is relevant to the discussion and not just spam I don't mind.
- jraines 19y agoThe guy has a business that he mentions only in context, ever. If it were coffee or bicycle horns would you be whining about it?
- jamiequint 19y agoGreat, what exactly does this have to do with getting high? If kratom really is "a rare stimulant that makes you more productive" as rms and imagenium claim (as opposed to a drug that binds to the same receptors as codeine and morphine, and can cause analgesia, sedation, reduced blood pressure, itching, nausea, euphoria, decreased respiration, miosis, and decreased bowel motility often leading to constipation.) Then it really has nothing to do with this conversation does it? What does a stimulant have to do with coding while high? It would be like you mentioning a coffee business in this this thread. "Oh, weed doesn't help me code, but triple tall vanilla soy latte's from --insert name of your silicon valley coffee shop here-- do."
- deleted 19y ago[deleted]
- eznet 19y agoKratom does get you 'high'. It is a stimulant at low doses, but its effects strongly resemble codeine when in slightly larger doses. Kratom extracts are available everywhere from ma and pa merchants to ebay. These extracts can easily be made into a tea that feels a lot like poppy tea - a feeling I would definitely call 'high'. I am not advocating anything here, just providing a little insight into how Kratom relates to 'high'.
- nailer 19y agoKevin Herbert, a technical fellow at Cisco solves problems using LSD. He makes no secret of his use of the drug and is quite open about its contribution to his work. See http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/01/70015 http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/01/70015
- kingnothing 19y agoI never produced anything worthwhile while high back in my experimentation days. Having said that, coding while drunk, especially with other people, is quite enjoyable. It can be a bitch to debug though, all depending on how drunk you ended up getting.
- aristus 19y agoIt only helps with large regular expressions.
- marcus 19y agoDid any one try programming on Modafinil?
- jey 19y agoIt worked for me when I wrote GCC-CIL, and that was one of my most productive periods ever. I worked a 40 hour/wk job at a research lab and hacked on GCC-CIL on evenings and weekends, progressing so quickly that it freaked out my mentor. But this data point really means nothing... it's probably just an indication that you have to be either drugged or insane to hack GCC's internals without vomiting. Overall, I don't recommend it. Do it every once in a while and you might have some cool ideas, but I bet you'll spend most of your time giggling and watching The Simpsons. I have not experimentally confirmed this, but apparently proper use of hallucinogens is the way to go for broadening perspective and etc. I'm personally interested in learning meditation techniques and seeing what sorts of effects that can have on the mind.
- rms 19y ago>you have to be either drugged or insane to hack GCC's internals I think that it is really funny that this is a logical conclusion you made.
- jawngee 19y agoIt's all about smoking the right blend at the right amount. Varying strains have different properties when imbued, so you have to choose carefully and not go overboard. You need to know what your smoking, the amounts by which to smoke it, etc. I'd say that 90% of my staff smokes on the regular. I find the cognitive dissonance helps me abstract problems out much more quickly, as well as increases concentration and thoroughness when tackling an issue. I understand this is the opposite response one would naturally assume to occur, but it really is about what you are smoking and how much. If you smoke so much that you suffer from a round of derealization, then it's going to dampen your output. Also, it's about how regularly you smoke as well. The more you do it, the more skill you have in dealing with the high itself. If you don't smoke weed regularly, social or otherwise, the less capable you will be of being functional on it. Naturally, it's not something I'd recommend doing every day, but it's certainly helped us more than hurt us at our particular company. There are some negatives, but for me, the positives of smoking and coding far outweigh the negatives. YMMV.
- aswanson 19y agoSay no to drugs.
- stevedekorte 19y agoIME, stimulants (xanthines, amphetamines, etc) in doses for which their effects are mild, tend to make me more productive while all other drugs (depressants, disassociatives, opiates and psychedelics) make me much less productive.
- Ras 19y agoTry for, winamp visualizations.