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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

#201

Post by WalterBright »

thewarrior wrote: post #177
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> highly productive mathematicians like Paul Erdos I think Paul Erdos' stimulant usage has been blown out of proportion. According to his biography, he took "10 to 20 milligrams of Benzedrine or Ritalin" ( https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/ho... ) which is, believe it or not, lower than a lot of people's commonly prescribed ADHD doses today. Erdos also published a lot of his best works before…

“ Colleagues worried that Erdős might have become addicted. In 1979, he accepted a $500 bet from his friend Ronald Graham. Graham challenged Erdős to abstain from speed for 30 days. Erdős met the challenge, but his output sank dramatically. Erdős felt the progress of mathematics had been held up by a stupid wager. In an article by Paul Hoffman published in November 1987, Atlantic Monthly profiled Erdős and discussed…

I'm sure any addicted person would perform very poorly when undergoing 30 days of withdrawal. I know when I withdraw from caffeine, the next few days are hopelessly unproductive.

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

#202

Post by WalterBright »

thewarrior wrote: post #183
Apocryphon wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jobs also took acid because he was in the generation where it was commonplace. Gates also did it, too. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bill-gates-once-coyly-defende...

And that generation was a powerhouse of business, innovation and culture. Counter culture laid the foundation for what we now call Silicon Valley.

Yeah, but that doesn't mean they were high when they were working.

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

#203

Post by mythrwy »

z3c0 wrote: post #154
stareblinkstare wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not funding drug lords. I avoid illegal drugs for this reason. I hate to break it to you... [Edit: it's best if I expand this comment. The people who currently sell "legal" weed whitewashed illegal operations and coordinated it with lawmakers to put them at the top. Chinese, oddly enough, play a big part at this, since we're on an anti-China bend right now it might be useful to know. This whole legal drug thing...…

Very apt username, as that's what I've found myself doing towards your comment. Do you have more information on this nefarious China-sponsored drug supply-chain?

There was a pretty high profile case in New Mexico of Chinese growers setting up shop on the Navajo reservation. It was a big operation too.

(you can probably search for better articles, here is one I just found)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56835897

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

#204

Post by dylan604 »

awestroke wrote: post #114
dylan604 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you care, and why is it important to the conversation? People work different hours. Some people choose to work those hours.

Because I was curious. Why do you care that I care?

I read it as accusational for working at an odd hour / after hour, so I was asking to see if that accusational tone was implied or just read into it by the reader. Why do you care why I care?

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

#205

Post by 3a2d29 »

ok_coo wrote: post #195
neveradmitmyid wrote: post #135

I've been a heavy, 1 oz. of Indica a week smoker for decades, while being an extremely productive lead and principal software engineer on dozens of highly visible tech products. I am part of a heavy smoking, high tech collective of startup and career research individuals from companies people use everyday. I start my day with a combination of THC and caffeine, which folds into a deep work and research focus lasting t…

The hippie speedball makes me ultra-productive, but unfortunately employers (well, mine) are probably not cool with me being high on Zoom calls. :/ I just wanted to chime in and say that, for some people, THC+caffeine in the right settings can give you a nice hyper-focus. I wish I could use the combo more often.

Just out of curiosity, why THC + caffeine? I am a regular coffee drinker, but never smoked at the same time.

Is it the caffeine gives you focus, but the THC removes the jitters and antsy-ness that goes along with it?

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

#206

Post by ok_dad »

rajin444 wrote: post #200
ok_dad wrote: post #191

I used to vape full spectrum THC+CBD cartridges and other forms of "vape juice" ("sugar", "oil", etc. are in that category) and consume THC+CBD edibles all day long, every day (except when I had to drive somewhere, I would stop for 4-6 hours or more prior to the trip), for about 2-3 (maybe 4?) years when I was in a legal state, but then I had to move to a non-legal state and since I have a kid it's no longer possible…

That’s weird - I had to go off weed during a highly stressful period of my life. It temporarily made me forget about how stressful things were but then it all came crashing back after it wore off. I didn’t have time to process the stress sober. I’ve heard it’s very useful for extremely traumatic or temporarily stressful incidents but I found the opposite for chronic stress.

I’m an anxious person and it helped me a lot. I think it really depends on the individual because my wife just gets more stressed and anxious on weed, but for me it’s a miracle drug. In any case, I’m okay sober but I would love to at least have weed occasionally during large levels of stress. I would never be one of those people who suggest weed is great for everyone, just like alcohol is okay for some folks but for others the negatives are greater than the positives. If government would get out of the way and let us all decide what we prefer, and allow us get high quality drugs from a reliable and tested source, then I think each person would be better served by that than the government being our mommy and daddy.

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

#207

Post by frank_nitti »

j4hdufd8 wrote: post #82
systemvoltage wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve tried weed, got addicted to it in college and have seen many people do the same. It made me lazy, completely unmotivated and unproductive. All I did was watch Anime and eat unhealthy foods. Contrary to the notion that you can think about great ideas and brainstorming - it’s amazing when you’re high. Write down those ideas and think about them when sober - I quickly realized how foolish they were. Concentration a…

> I absolutely cannot believe this study What do you not believe about the study? Did you read the study? > In this paper, we presented results of the first empirical study of cannabis’s prevalence, perceptions, and usage motivations in programming environments I don't think this study says "weed makes you better" or anything like that.

Thanks for calling out one of the many people responding without reading the material, not even the abstract apparently. HN users are typically better about this than other platforms, but this topic seems to be especially triggering for people who have had some negative life experience related to weed.

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

#208

Post by whalesalad »

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?

Eliminating chronic pain can have the net result of improving concentration and intelligence from baseline.

I have absolutely had profoundly productive days while using THC. It's not black and white. Like any tool, it needs to be used responsibly.

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

#209

Post by flatiron »

pengaru wrote: post #181
flatiron wrote: post #15

I got my three kids desks for christmas. Put them down to bed for the night and smoke a little weed. I was shocked how I couldn’t follow ikea desk instructions. Got frustrated and decided to try again sober. I was super shocked the next day how easy it was to follow when sober.

I am super shocked by your apparent ignorance of such well-known effects from the drugs you're using. Especially at such a late stage in life, having multiple kids under your purview. Maybe I'll just assume you were high when you wrote that comment.

It was my first time trying to build furniture while high. Not currently high.

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

#210

Post by ineptech »

datavirtue wrote: post #142
ineptech wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience and some of the comments, it seems like a common thread is that weed is good for "clean the garage" tasks - not cognitively challenging but tedious, something you'd like to be distracted from - and not good for reading and retaining new information. In programming terms, I think it's great for refactoring, or let's say working through a bunch of corner cases on some weird business data you have to…

This fits mwith my experience. When my tasks are defined and are left only to implement I can plow through a lot of work. If I have to develop (or much worse, alter) abstractions that make use of generics and OOP I do not feel productive at all. I get very confused, easily. (Though I often power through it just fine) I do not smoke during business hours while working on client systems however, that does not sound app…

This is interesting, I wish it were that easy for me. Do you do any prep work, i.e. "story planning" (presumably in a less formal way than you would at work)? I find that, for my side projects, I can do a lot of damage while high IFF I have a very clear idea of exactly how the feature should work; but if sober me hasn't worked out clear acceptance criteria for the thing I'm doing, either I daydream and don't actually get anything done, or I wind up doing something totally unrelated, like an opportunistic refactor of something irrelevant to what I sat down to work on.
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