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Ask HN: How many of you (coders) use marijuana?

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Re: Ask HN: How many of you (coders) use marijuana?

#71

Post by callahad »

yan wrote: post #50
sanj wrote: post #48

My brain is the organ that keeps the lights on, writes the codes, designs the presentations and pays the bills. I have no interest in messing with it. I actively avoid caffeine when the going gets tough.

That's akin to saying "My legs are what gives me locomotion. I don't want to create stress and tear their muscle tissue by exercising. It will just mess with them." Please note that I'm not taking one side or another, but caffeine has been shown to provide more benefits than harms in moderation.

I also gave up caffeine in university. I found myself drinking bottles of Mountain Dew during lectures and still feeling drowsy. So I gave it up.

After two weeks of fatigue and lethargy, I was fine. I slept better, and was more alert.

But most of all, I gained the ability to actually abuse caffeine. If I need to work through the night and still function the next day, all it takes is a single can of Doctor Pepper or a cup of tea. It's like a super power.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you (coders) use marijuana?

#72

Post by schizoBrother »

This is the first time I have commented. Please don't do this: you are increasing your risk of schizophrenia by smoking dope. If you only saw what that does to people and those around them. My brother suffers from this and it is terrible for him. You can all do the searches if you want to find evidence for the increase in risk.

"my brain is my second favourite organ", keep it that way.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you (coders) use marijuana?

#73

Post by lordycon »

endlessvoid94 wrote: post #64
jawngee wrote: post #39

Jeff Atwood apparently doesn't: http://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/1305109744

I agree with him 100%. This is a bit of a disappointment. Hacker News is very slowly going the way of reddit. Very slowly. I hope we can eventually keep this in check.

I don't. Hackers have long had a hippy element to their culture and plenty of people on here clearly find it of benefit. It's a valid topic to discuss.

Who made this Jeff person the thought police anyway? Does he have a rival site or something...?

Re: Ask HN: How many of you (coders) use marijuana?

#74

Post by tptacek »

mrtron wrote: post #55
rsayers wrote: post #5

I havn't in a little over a year now. Current company drug tests and I enjoy a paycheck more than I enjoy getting high. That said, I do very much enjoy it and have had some "breakthroughs" related to coding projects while high. Moderation is key, it can be great for helping you think about things differently, but if you overdo it, you can certainly do more harm than good.

I have always been firmly against company drug testing. How is that legal? Also, you could be a severe alcoholic or on huge amounts of prescribed medications and that is just fine?

It's not legal for a company to force you to be drug tested. You can always say "no" and walk away. Unfortunately, it is in almost every state totally legal for your employer to fire you for absolutely no reason, so long as they aren't discriminating against for you on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, or disability.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you (coders) use marijuana?

#75

Post by tptacek »

cosmo7 wrote: post #51

You have a choice in life: You can smoke dope, get stoned, start dozens of unfinished projects in Ruby or Scala or Haskell or whatever you've just read about, wear bad clothes and think you're doing something worthwhile just because you're up to date with xkcd and know how to jailbreak your iPhone. Or you can learn a real language - one with braces, as God intended - preferably C# but Java is acceptable, build a busi…

The second. Two. 2! I choose 2!

Re: Ask HN: How many of you (coders) use marijuana?

#76

Post by jgalvez »

schizoBrother wrote: post #72

This is the first time I have commented. Please don't do this: you are increasing your risk of schizophrenia by smoking dope. If you only saw what that does to people and those around them. My brother suffers from this and it is terrible for him. You can all do the searches if you want to find evidence for the increase in risk. "my brain is my second favourite organ", keep it that way.

Schizophrenia is only a risk if you start smoking dope at an early age, before your brain is fully developed, and this is true not only for marijuana but also for pretty much all psychoactive drugs (Ritaline, anyone?). Consuming psychoactive substances at an early age is never a good idea.

For the record, schizophrenia has never been associated to people who started smoking marijuana /after/ adolescence, and it has even show therapeutic properties for a number of brain disorders, such as Alzheimer's.

I should add that unfortunately many youngsters and adolescents smoke pot and that should absolutely not happen, the same way alcohol and cigarettes are prohibited for people under 18/21.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you (coders) use marijuana?

#77

Post by pwk »

teej wrote: post #69
amohr wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people come to the mistaken conclusion that smoking pot makes you "stupid." I don't think it necessarily impairs cognitive performance as much as it makes it seem less important. If we were passing around a joint and before I had to hit it again, I had to multiply two 3-digit numbers together and translate a a paragraph into spanish, I could. But smoking makes you less likely to approach a problem li…

I don't think he is saying that 'smoking pot makes you "stupid"'. The point he makes is that empirical observations about your own performance, while on a mind-altering drug, are inherently flawed.

It can be hard enough to make empirical observations about one's own performance even when not under the influence of a mind-altering drug.

I did once spend an afternoon making recordings of myself playing guitar at different levels of sobriety. Results pretty much as expected :->.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you (coders) use marijuana?

#78

Post by derwiki »

cosmo7 wrote: post #51

You have a choice in life: You can smoke dope, get stoned, start dozens of unfinished projects in Ruby or Scala or Haskell or whatever you've just read about, wear bad clothes and think you're doing something worthwhile just because you're up to date with xkcd and know how to jailbreak your iPhone. Or you can learn a real language - one with braces, as God intended - preferably C# but Java is acceptable, build a busi…

If I was in the latter situation, I wouldn't be sitting around on Hacker News poking fun at pot heads. So, how are those braces working out for you? ;-)

Re: Ask HN: How many of you (coders) use marijuana?

#79

Post by swombat »

jgalvez wrote: post #65
a_toker wrote: post #34

I created this account for privacy reasons, and I'm one of the more active/karmic people in this community. Yes, this is an oppressive culture (in the US). I'm a somewhat heavy bud smoker and a full-time developer. #define HEAVY? That's subjective, but I can comfortably go through a quarter ounce in a week, and my ideal consumption is probably 1.5 grams per day. I've known people who think a bowl a day is heavy and t…

I'm not sure you're with me on this one but allow me to elaborate: 4. Concentration: distraction and lack of focus is the #1 killer of all good software projects. And I have seen that programmers, in my experience, have a natural talent to be distracted and lose focus. Who never lost a day on a combination of Reddit, Bloglines and Hacker News? I know I did. Of course you don't need marijuana to force yourself to atta…

I suspect that largely depends on the subject.

I focus when I'm under pressure. For me, MJ would remove all that pressure, so I couldn't care less about code.

Different people, different results.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you (coders) use marijuana?

#80

Post by modoc »

I don't drink, smoke, do drugs, and a cup of tea is about the limit of my caffeine intake.

My brain is very precious to me, and if I do anything that might damage it, there's no way to fix it, or get a new one, so I try to stay away from anything that could kill brain cells, rewire things, etc...

But, that's just me. I'm pro legalization, etc... People should be free to get high if they want.

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