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A Survey of Programmers' Cannabis Usage, Perception, and Motivation

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Re: A Survey of Programmers' Cannabis Usage, Perception, and Motivation

#121

Post by torbTurret »

MissionInfl wrote: post #22
throwaway599281 wrote: post #5

> Furthermore, this cannabis usage is primarily motivated by a perceived enhancement to certain software development skills (such as brainstorming or getting into a programming zone) rather than medicinal reasons How can anyone who has tried it remotely believe this nonsense?

It's possible to have different reactions to the same drug :) As someone that is a heavy longtime user and recently diagnosed ADHD (there is a deep relationship between cannabis/substances and ADHD), I did find during the pandemic that smoking cannabis prior to writing software made it feel more productive. Given I couldn't prove that I was really more productive, and there are other costs, I decided against using it…

“Feel more productive” - just like all the drunk drivers who swear, “I actually drive better drunk!”

Re: A Survey of Programmers' Cannabis Usage, Perception, and Motivation

#122

Post by vlovich123 »

thewarrior wrote: post #94
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drugs significantly alter cognitive processes and perceptions. I know that reads like a duh comment because that's literally why people take them, but it's amazing how frequently drugs users forget that the drugs alter their perceptions of how the drug is impacting their lives. I've fortunately only had a few of my friends succumb to addictions, but it was surreal to watch them remain convinced that the drugs (includ…

I think that people thinking that mind altering substances cannot be a useful tool should keep an open mind about it and let those people who are getting real results out of it keep doing their thing. And yes these people do exist. They are not going to be too open about it because of how taboo it is. It’s well known that many of the greatest rock bands, highly productive mathematicians like Paul Erdos and comedians…

That may be the case but we should also be careful to not assume that people under the influence are able to accurately evaluate its impact on their performance. Nor should we extrapolate on the general impact based on the experiences of some. Not everyone smoking that jazz cabbage is a Steve Jobs. And there’s no guarantee that the change it has is good for that person (eg triggering some latent susceptibility to schizophrenia as we know LSD can do from the MK Ultra experiments)

Re: A Survey of Programmers' Cannabis Usage, Perception, and Motivation

#123

Post by pietrovismara »

throwaway599281 wrote: post #5

> Furthermore, this cannabis usage is primarily motivated by a perceived enhancement to certain software development skills (such as brainstorming or getting into a programming zone) rather than medicinal reasons How can anyone who has tried it remotely believe this nonsense?

I tried and can confirm it works exactly like that for me.

Re: A Survey of Programmers' Cannabis Usage, Perception, and Motivation

#124

Post by doovd »

indiantinker wrote: post #84
pm90 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am so glad to read this because I am just the same. Day time seems like there’s just too much other things to do, night time it’s quiet and dark and it feels cozy to sit at my desk, uninterrupted by slack messages or meetings and get long stretches of focus time.

I am double glad to read this. I am pretty much the same. I just cannot work when other people are around. I tend to end up helping them on some of their tasks and do my work when they all have left. The problem is that doing so gets work done , but you get a bit burny and your, if any, social life suffers. I have since then, done the following, found a special zone/cabin and started to make a list when I go to this…

FWIW, liking to work at night is s very popular thing.

Re: A Survey of Programmers' Cannabis Usage, Perception, and Motivation

#125

Post by shaky »

TrippinTraveler wrote: post #104
veidelis wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just lovely to hear how honest you are about your "situation". I enjoy smoking occasionally. I would say that sometimes I dismiss my thoughts too quickly when I'm sober, and rarely engage in thought process about particular details too intensively when I'm a bit off the ground. Otherwise it's great no matter what's being done, just need to be active.

Thanks, hopefully I am being honest with myself. I think weed can be very different for different people. Also it's not really mentioned here but Sativa and Indica strains also can make a difference as well as the THC % and method of consumption. I vape half a bowl from my Pax 3, I am in Canada so it's legal and we have THC % labels, I typically go for 25%+ which is not the "cheap stuff". I'd say if someone smoked my…

You sound very much like me. Totally happy with my usage, and a chronic user that smokes 2-3 times per day reaching about a gram. It helps with empathy, it helps with creative flow, it helps with many things, but there are downsides of course. From August to December I took a break and it was immensely useful for perspective and for resetting my brain. My dreams were extremely vivid and rich, and going back to smoking was like rediscovering pot when I was 16. T breaks are indeed the key as GP pointed out.

Re: A Survey of Programmers' Cannabis Usage, Perception, and Motivation

#126

Post by criticaltinker »

TrippinTraveler wrote: post #104
veidelis wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just lovely to hear how honest you are about your "situation". I enjoy smoking occasionally. I would say that sometimes I dismiss my thoughts too quickly when I'm sober, and rarely engage in thought process about particular details too intensively when I'm a bit off the ground. Otherwise it's great no matter what's being done, just need to be active.

Thanks, hopefully I am being honest with myself. I think weed can be very different for different people. Also it's not really mentioned here but Sativa and Indica strains also can make a difference as well as the THC % and method of consumption. I vape half a bowl from my Pax 3, I am in Canada so it's legal and we have THC % labels, I typically go for 25%+ which is not the "cheap stuff". I'd say if someone smoked my…

Not going to bed stoned should be a recommended best practice in my opinion, especially given all the research supporting the fact that sleep is impaired by Cannabis much the same way as alcohol.

So many people claim that Cannabis helps them sleep but the science just doesn’t support that idea.

Re: A Survey of Programmers' Cannabis Usage, Perception, and Motivation

#127

Post by rpmisms »

Datagenerator wrote: post #81
GrumpyNl wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I experience it the same way.

Maybe it's CBD and almost no THC that enables being productive and creative

Maybe? CBD does next to nothing for me. A small amount of THC enables really deep focus for me. I'd describe it as allowing me to follow every thought that passes and deliberately investigate it.

Re: A Survey of Programmers' Cannabis Usage, Perception, and Motivation

#128

Post by sophacles »

throwaway599281 wrote: post #5

> Furthermore, this cannabis usage is primarily motivated by a perceived enhancement to certain software development skills (such as brainstorming or getting into a programming zone) rather than medicinal reasons How can anyone who has tried it remotely believe this nonsense?

I program high often. It's resulted in good code and bad code at proportions roughly equal to sober programming. The difference is generally in which code is good in each case.

Tricky memory stuff, trying to deal with complex order of operations (threads, race conditions, etc) tends to go way better sober.

House keeping like light refactors (im in rust these days so stuff like: oh that should be a result not an option, or using matches instead of ifs, genericize this struct), boiler plate stuff and cleaning up logs/error handling tends to go better when I'm high.

But there are exceptions to both trends and I've done good deep work high and done plenty of good housekeeping sober. And of course since it's coding, i've (re)done plenty of bad work in both states too.

Sad to know my experience is just nonsense. I guess I need to get in touch with the CFO and let him know the profit from the product I wrote is just a pipe dream.

Re: A Survey of Programmers' Cannabis Usage, Perception, and Motivation

#129

Post by throwawaygh »

haswell wrote: post #19
throwawaygh wrote: post #3

Is "programmer" a coherent group? How much does a Senior Engineer doing something like writing kernel code have in common with a fresh high school grad writing on something like a single threaded ASP/PHP codebase for an internal tool that has fewer than 100 daily users? I've done both of those jobs, and they both involve the same set of general tasks (requirements, brainstorming, coding). But in actuality they have a…

I’ve also done both of those jobs, and they have quite a bit in common. The scale of the problems to be solved may be different, and that naturally results in some differences between the roles, but the fundamentals are all the same. It’s unclear what kind of point you’re trying to make and how it had any bearing on the cannabis angle.

> but the fundamentals are all the same.

Sure. Also, any job that requires writing English all day has some cross-cutting fundamentals.

I'm making a general point about empirical software engineering research: "does the question that's being asked get at the fundamentals that are shared between all programmers, or do we need to be more careful about specifying what we mean when we say 'programmer'?"

> It’s unclear what kind of point you’re trying to make and how it had any bearing on the cannabis angle.

I could probably do the "$local_shop web dev job" high all day. Not probably. I definitely could write straight-forward iPhone apps or Django web apps all day long while high as a kite. No problem.

I definitely couldn't do other programming jobs high all day -- either because I need to spend a ton of time in careful conversation with other people, or because the technical problems require sobriety, or more usually a combination of both.

Apparently the basic observation that some programming is easier than other programming is divisive here. That's fine for an HN comment thread. But I'd love to see a paper that goes something like "here are some buckets of programming jobs. Let's try to replicate a bunch of empirical SE studies with samples selected from each of these buckets and see what happens."

Re: A Survey of Programmers' Cannabis Usage, Perception, and Motivation

#130

Post by noah_buddy »

thewarrior wrote: post #94
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drugs significantly alter cognitive processes and perceptions. I know that reads like a duh comment because that's literally why people take them, but it's amazing how frequently drugs users forget that the drugs alter their perceptions of how the drug is impacting their lives. I've fortunately only had a few of my friends succumb to addictions, but it was surreal to watch them remain convinced that the drugs (includ…

I think that people thinking that mind altering substances cannot be a useful tool should keep an open mind about it and let those people who are getting real results out of it keep doing their thing. And yes these people do exist. They are not going to be too open about it because of how taboo it is. It’s well known that many of the greatest rock bands, highly productive mathematicians like Paul Erdos and comedians…

Paul Erdos took uppers, specifically Ritalin and caffeine, IIRC. Carlin was pretty vocal about the majorly negative impacts of drug abuse on his life and even went to rehab.

Prior discussion on Erdos, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2497420

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