Ask HN: Do you ever program under 'the' influence?
I know this could be seen as a trite query, but with the advent of a very real possibility of mass legalization in the next 10 years, i wonder how it will affect IT in general as many tech industry hubs are in potential Green States.
I am specifically interested in marijuana, but if you are huge fan of boozing behind the keyboard that is cool too.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 42.5 ms ] threadMaybe I'm missing out on something? [1]
[1] https://xkcd.com/323/
Especially things like reverse engineering - sometimes I get lost in all the random variable/function names - a little THC and I have it figured out in no time. It's amazing really.
I haven't really found an activity it makes worse, but in all honesty I'm probably not looking all that hard.
Marijuana's great for design work, less great for debugging. Creative solutions come more easily. I tend to get distracted when trying to understand why something doesn't work the way I think it does; it takes more work to stay focused. Good for broad association, systems thinking, and novel ideas; less good for careful analysis.
Whiskey is good for breaking out of analysis paralysis; it makes me happy and a little stupid, which is good for just bashing something out that works instead of going around and around about the best way to do it. Sometimes I drink when I'm coding late at night because it eventually slows me down enough that I can stop thinking about work and go do something else. A few drinks later and the code may still work but I'll want to rewrite it all the next day.
Methamphetamine is an incredibly powerful tool for grinding through big jobs and maintaining focus for hours. It's like coding with super-powers. Whatever you focus on, you FOCUS ON IT; you can just sink your teeth in and bash away at it for seemingly ever, hours and hours of clear, crisp, effective code. It's hard to pull back and look at the big picture, because you just want to pound away at the keyboard building on what's right in front of you, but on balance it is still a more productive state of mind for coding than sobriety is. Alas, it's also very addictive, and worthy of extreme respect.
LSD is... fun, but not helpful. The last time I tried it, I remember being so distracted by the colorful edges of the pixels on the screen (this was before retina displays) that I had trouble actually reading the text. It was really fun to watch but I got nothing done.
A very light dose of ketamine makes everything feel a little floaty and weird and sort of funny. It's fairly distracting, and staying focused takes extar work, but complex and useful insights just sort of materialize in your head. It's good for getting out of your ego, ditching mental ruts, and letting yourself come up with novel solutions. Not as good at this as marijuana, but it's also less prone to put me to sleep.
I think cocktailing drugs to create a roughly 24 on 8 off awake/sleep cycle is the direction utilitarian narcotics will go, but i am a lil' high. jk but srs
But hey! Let's don't fool ourselves here. If you are going to implement some back-end stuff and business functionality - don't code high. Thinking about abstraction levels, algorithms, core functionality, in some point you will absolutely feel like there is some sort of barrier in your brain avoiding you to think 'further'. This causes a distraction and you will have to start thinking from scratch again.
About other natural stuff like shrooms (and partially LSD) - if you get your good mind after having the first intense kick, your brain might become crystal clear and you can be absolutely productive. Coke might also work, but that's too expensive. Stay away from the rest.
Steve Jobs was on LSD when he was inventing Apple in his Garage.