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Ask HN: Devs with ADHD do you use specialized tooling?

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Re: Ask HN: Devs with ADHD do you use specialized tooling?

#71

Post by MacsHeadroom »

AnthonBerg wrote: post #62
MacsHeadroom wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have four monitors and it works for me. Lowest possible CAS, highest possible clock speed. Nvidia RTX series is necessary for dabbling with AI at acceptable speeds, which seems to be the future. 3090 or 4090 are best due to higher VRAM. You don't need raid, just get fast nvram SSDs.

> You don't need raid, just get fast nvram SSDs. I agree! - The typical fast M.2 drive or an Apple drive: This is plenty. However! It's really, really, really surprisingly nice - surprisingly worthwhile! - to get more of those and stripe RAID the heck out of them. rn I have a striped array of [Samsung 500GB M.2 (x4)] [Samsung 500GB M.2 (x2)] [Striped sub-array of 83⅓-GB portions of 6 Samsung 500GB SATA drives to use…

I went with 27" 1440p for the extra pixels. 4k is a little overkill IMHO, but 1080p is definitely not enough.

Re: Ask HN: Devs with ADHD do you use specialized tooling?

#72

Post by AnthonBerg »

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #71
AnthonBerg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't need raid, just get fast nvram SSDs. I agree! - The typical fast M.2 drive or an Apple drive: This is plenty. However! It's really, really, really surprisingly nice - surprisingly worthwhile! - to get more of those and stripe RAID the heck out of them. rn I have a striped array of [Samsung 500GB M.2 (x4)] [Samsung 500GB M.2 (x2)] [Striped sub-array of 83⅓-GB portions of 6 Samsung 500GB SATA drives to use…

I went with 27" 1440p for the extra pixels. 4k is a little overkill IMHO, but 1080p is definitely not enough.

Yup! — It’s very interesting imo how different the best monitor setup for different people. I worked with a friend who is a lot like me in a lot of ways – and they just used a 13” laptop and nothing else and it was obviously the best setup for them.

—It’s tricky with big 4K displays. Subtle. I worked on a 43” 4K IPS display for a while and it didn’t work for me — the pixels were just big enough for the structure of them to have an effect on how things looked. Slightly weird color / light things at the edges.

The 55” 4K OLED doesn’t have this issue even though the pixels are bigger because of how it works fundamentally. No pixel mechanism to see there really.

(It might be possible to build a 43” 4K IPS panel that doesn’t have the issue, idk!, but it would be such a tiny niche product that I doubt it would happen anyway.)

Re: Ask HN: Devs with ADHD do you use specialized tooling?

#73

Post by ZeroGravitas »

solarkraft wrote: post #55
AnthonBerg wrote: post #21

As much screen area as possible. High refresh rate, good color. Yes, for programming. I have a 55” LG CX 120Hz 4K OLED TV as my monitor now. Space for everything: Code, more code, documentation, filesystem, browser, notes. Tweak everything for low latency. Example: Switch IntelliJ to the ZGC garbage collector. Give it extra RAM. Have a fast GPU. Yes, just for throwing windows around. Fast CPU with lots of cores. Tune…

I guess this is more important than I realized. I use a 4K TV too and it's pretty nice (with the exception of the menu bar being annoyingly high). I used to have a setup that would only allow for 30Hz it and it was super painful. Also: Glitchy animations are the biggest reason I can't use Windows. macos has some too and I find those pretty bad as well.

Mac OS has a 'reduce motion' accessability setting that might help with some of those animations.

Re: Ask HN: Devs with ADHD do you use specialized tooling?

#74

Post by foxandmouse »

graypegg wrote: post #27

Omnifocus for me. It’s been the only thing I’ve stuck with. I’m pretty sure that’s because it’s the only task system I’ve used that lets you hide things based on properties; I don’t get anything done facing a giant list, but a small focused list of things I can do right now, is possible. It also fills a need for organization meta-work, but that’s not really a positive hah Best thing I can recommend is pick ONLY ONE t…

I love omnifocus, but It was going to be around $300 for me to use it on my iphone/ mac/ ipad.. I transitioned to things and never looked back. I'm pretty sure they're at parity with features. (at least for my usecase)

Re: Ask HN: Devs with ADHD do you use specialized tooling?

#75

Post by flir »

tapoxi wrote: post #13

I use https://selfcontrolapp.com/ to block websites that offer a quick dopamine hit, like HN. I put my phone in do-not-disturb mode. I block focus time on Google Calendar and set myself to be DND on Slack during that time. Jira actually helps, but I set some time aside to organize it, typically when I know I can be interrupted because it doesn't require much focus. Split every task into multiple subtasks. This makes…

Cold Turkery Blocker here.

Re: Ask HN: Devs with ADHD do you use specialized tooling?

#76

Post by AnthonBerg »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #73
solarkraft wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this is more important than I realized. I use a 4K TV too and it's pretty nice (with the exception of the menu bar being annoyingly high). I used to have a setup that would only allow for 30Hz it and it was super painful. Also: Glitchy animations are the biggest reason I can't use Windows. macos has some too and I find those pretty bad as well.

Mac OS has a 'reduce motion' accessability setting that might help with some of those animations.

Yep! That option works well for some people but personally I find it takes a bit too much "feel" away.

There are other options like making some animation speeds faster (so fast that the animation is almost imperceptible) and disabling some animations in Finder. The Cocktail utility can do it, and it can be done from the terminal too.

I'm not 100% sure this is up to date, but it might be: https://osxdaily.com/2015/01/06/make-the-window-resizing-ani...

The main one is basically like this:

  defaults write -g NSWindowResizeTime -float 0.003
Plus there are some more similar things you can set in `defaults`. (What the Cocktail utility is is a GUI that captures knowledge about a bunch of these settings into a convenient tool. There are other utilities like this afaik? BetterTouchTool maybe? idk.)

Then there's something called yabai which is a 'window management utility', but afaik it goes a lot deeper than other similar programs for macOS - it can disable animations and do some more stuff up to the point that you need to (partially) disable SIP to be able to make full use of it. Haven't tried but it does seems to be very worthwhile. https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai

Re: Ask HN: Devs with ADHD do you use specialized tooling?

#77

Post by jbirer »

abrookewood wrote: post #19
jbirer wrote: post #17

My stack is: TomatoTimer Dual monitors with one monitor playing YouTube Travel/ASMR/whatever is interesting radio.garden (playing radio with vocals seems to keep me focused for some reason) Rewarding myself with foods, drinks, spoiling myself And lastly, something I recently discovered, edging. When I edge to porn without release I feel much more energetic and focused. Something to do with dopamine apparently. I imag…

I imagine the latter may cause issues as people transition back to working in the office ...

That's why I love Work from Home. You can even do it during job interviews.

Re: Ask HN: Devs with ADHD do you use specialized tooling?

#79

Post by annie_muss »

I'm a (not particularly successful) dev with ADHD.

Some of the general organisational advice can be helpful. Keep things in calendars, todo lists, files etc. There is no magic bullet. A todo list won't fix your lack of executive function. Just pick some tools to keep track of everything.

I really like voice assistants. I use an Amazon echo to update my calendar, set timers, reminders etc. For me, pulling out my phone to do any of those is guaranteed distraction.

Some time tracking told are useful for finding out what works for you and what you actually did with you time. "Today felt really bad, but actually I got three hours work done" or "I went on YouTube for 6 hours straight, what sent me off task?"

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