Ask HN: What do you snack on while coding?

27 points by mgdv ↗ HN
I'm finding that working from home often means vising the fridge/kitchen more

What are you snacks of choice while you hack away?

50 comments

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Alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol.
grapes old grapes that you can drink

(but really i do love grapes) maybe celery or baby carrots. the high water content keeps me awake

Mini-carrots and/or mini tomatoes.
I really like carrots because they keep very easily and have such as satisfying crunchy freshness. Mini tomatoes are great when you alternate them with a few tiny mozzarella balls.

I also drink lots of coffee.

Just cofee. I don't eat during the coding sessions.
Water and coffee in the first half of the day. Water only in the second half. Snacks don't work for me at all.
My favorite snack while coding is homemade beer and wine.
Cheese and salami
Almonds, crunchy and healthy

(yes I'm aware they're pretty bad for the environment)

Not much of a snack eater personally, in the odd situation where it comes up I'll have a banana or something.

Caffeine though, that's my weakness

> not much of a snack eater

> caffeine is my weakness

I think these two statements are related!

Almost certain you're right :) Only exception is the nicotine, but I'm working my way down!
good luck to you! i am the opposite spectrum, always eating but i avoid stimulants like the plague because my heart is always racing to begin with XD
Snacks typically make me feel drowsy or lose concentration. I will typical eat gum if I need something.
"Simply Gum". I like the fennel flavor.
I think snacks are dangerous. Eat while your attention is elsewhere, grow obese, suffer ill health.

And going away to prepare a meal gives me time to step back and think over the bigger picture of whatever I’m in the middle of.

I drink a lot of tea. Snacks are usually fruit or nuts. I reserve unhealthy snacks like chips for a rare night of late work.
High carbonation sparkling mineral water. It gives that same “hit” as sipping a can of soda, but is much healthier.
The hoppy sodas too can be a nice replacement for beer though my dentist told me to cut back on sparkling water bc the high acidity can cause excess wear on your teeth. I sort of listened.
coffee in the morning and a decaf in the afternoon
My go-to is cashews. I used to eat raw, unroasted, unsalted cashews, but during the pandemic, I developed a sensitivity from eating too many, I guess? (tingling mouth/tongue, elevated heart rate) so I’ve recently started roasting them myself, which takes care of the relevant (natural) bacteria. Put them in a pan for 15 minutes at 350F. They taste much better than store bought roasted nuts, too.

Other favorites:

- Cheddar cheese

- Beef/turkey jerky

- Salami or other thin-cut cured meats

It’s important to watch salt intake, though. Cheap stuff generally has more.

And then every afternoon, after 3 or 4, coffee and a “coffee snack”, usually a fig newton or other fresh baked good.

Do you have any issue with weight gain or something along that line?
No, I don't think from snacking, anyway, though also since just before the pandemic started and I was spending more time at home, I started exercising regularly, too.
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Just coffee these days. I feel like I stopped snacking in the last 2 years. I snacked much more when we were in the office. lots of trailmix, wasabi peas, M&Ms, and bowls of cereal. I always had wet wipes lol because of snacks.
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Bugs
Let this be the joke thread.

I snack on fresh bits from HN.

Depends if the keyboard I'm using is easily cleanable. If not, I avoid anything crumbly, drippy, or apt to leave orangey-coloured dust on my fingers.
Impress everyone with your chopstick skills, picking up spherical cheese puffs with the chopsticks, while leaving your fingers clean. Given the texture, weight, and deformability of cheese puffs, it's probably a lot easier than it looks.
Okay I gave chopsticks a try and it messed up my workflow. Before:

1. Type on keyboard and use mouse as needed. 2. Grab snack bite with left hand that leaves orangey-coloured dust on my fingers. 3. Move left hand back to keyboard.

After:

1. Type on keyboard and use mouse as needed. 2. Move right hand off keyboard or mouse to location of chopsticks. 3. Pick up and use chopsticks to grab a snack bite. 4. Put down chopsticks. 5. Move right hand back to mouse or keyboard.

See, no orangey-coloured dust, but no profit! Maybe I should build a foot-pedal-activated snack launching catapult or trebuchet.

I've developed a routine of walking to my local grocery store (Metropolitan Market) and getting a soup from their lunch counter / deli area and sipping on it while I work.
I used to snack on salted unshelled sunflower seeds. The process of sucking the salt off the shell, breaking the shell open in my mouth, separating the two, spitting out the shell and swallowing the sunflower seed was just the right level of physical distraction to block out most other external stimuli while not breaking my coding concentration. These days I don't snack but if I did, I'd probably go back to sunflower seeds. The pile of chewed up shells is a bit unsightly, even if you have a paper towel to sit them on before dumping them into the trash, so that's something to keep in mind if you share your workspace with others.
My most common snack is a green sour apple (granny smith) sliced into 8 semi-equal pieces with the core removed. I put them on a small plate and subconsciously eat while thinking.