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Effect of perceptual load on performance within IDE in people with ADHD symptoms

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Re: Effect of perceptual load on performance within IDE in people with ADHD symptoms

#61

Post by flir »

vanderZwan wrote: post #54
dkh wrote: post #16

As an engineer for 10+ years with pretty severe ADHD (unmedicated, I cannot usually even read more than a few pages of a book before either losing focus or feeling drained) I have always been aware of how much my performance fluctuates based on the cognitive load of dealing with the code I am currently working with, and how it is displayed. I half-jokingly tend to describe it to people as having a "small brain buffer…

> unmedicated, I cannot usually even read more than a few pages of a book before either losing focus or feeling drained Tangent: ADHD is strange. I have it too, and yet when it comes to reading my symptoms appear to be the exact opposite (when I was younger I could not stop reading books until I finished them, even if I ended up skipping an entire night of sleep for it). I wouldn't be surprised if in the next decades…

Already has to a degree - hyperactive type and inattentive type.

But you've also got to consider personal taste - hyperfixation happens when it's something you're interested in. Someone else might hyperfocus on video games, or trawling ebay, or researching a topic.

Re: Effect of perceptual load on performance within IDE in people with ADHD symptoms

#62

Post by dkh »

flir wrote: post #61
vanderZwan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unmedicated, I cannot usually even read more than a few pages of a book before either losing focus or feeling drained Tangent: ADHD is strange. I have it too, and yet when it comes to reading my symptoms appear to be the exact opposite (when I was younger I could not stop reading books until I finished them, even if I ended up skipping an entire night of sleep for it). I wouldn't be surprised if in the next decades…

Already has to a degree - hyperactive type and inattentive type. But you've also got to consider personal taste - hyperfixation happens when it's something you're interested in. Someone else might hyperfocus on video games, or trawling ebay, or researching a topic.

I am famous for "ratholing" for hours on some specific thing that caught my interest, usually with little sense of the time that has passed, and almost exclusively on problems that aren't at all what I'm supposed to be focused on at the time

Re: Effect of perceptual load on performance within IDE in people with ADHD symptoms

#63

Post by vidarh »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #47
vidarh wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I currently is bspwm on my personal laptop, and work on a Mac, and it was a brutal change to go back to a non-tiled wm at work (I tried without as an experiment to see how I'd feel about it when I first got the new work machine - the jury is in: It's absolutely awful; Yabai is heaven in comparison). As far back as the 1980's when I was using an Amiga, I'd always effectively work full screen or with carefully tiled la…

Perhaps a vim + tmux + magnet (mac app) setup could work for you?

I detest vim far more than I detest overlapping window managers ;) Yabai works ok. It's not ideal but its close enough.

Re: Effect of perceptual load on performance within IDE in people with ADHD symptoms

#64

Post by dkh »

vanderZwan wrote: post #54
dkh wrote: post #16

As an engineer for 10+ years with pretty severe ADHD (unmedicated, I cannot usually even read more than a few pages of a book before either losing focus or feeling drained) I have always been aware of how much my performance fluctuates based on the cognitive load of dealing with the code I am currently working with, and how it is displayed. I half-jokingly tend to describe it to people as having a "small brain buffer…

> unmedicated, I cannot usually even read more than a few pages of a book before either losing focus or feeling drained Tangent: ADHD is strange. I have it too, and yet when it comes to reading my symptoms appear to be the exact opposite (when I was younger I could not stop reading books until I finished them, even if I ended up skipping an entire night of sleep for it). I wouldn't be surprised if in the next decades…

What you describe is how I was when I was younger, too. I read everything, I read pretty fast, and I could read for hours on end. That is no longer the case at all, and I'm uncertain when or why it changed so drastically. (The "when" is tough to pinpoint because for much of my early 20s I wasn't doing much reading, and it's possible that the "why" is related to some change my brain underwent during/because of that.)

Re: Effect of perceptual load on performance within IDE in people with ADHD symptoms

#65

Post by [deleted] »

dkh wrote: post #62
flir wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Already has to a degree - hyperactive type and inattentive type. But you've also got to consider personal taste - hyperfixation happens when it's something you're interested in. Someone else might hyperfocus on video games, or trawling ebay, or researching a topic.

I am famous for "ratholing" for hours on some specific thing that caught my interest, usually with little sense of the time that has passed, and almost exclusively on problems that aren't at all what I'm supposed to be focused on at the time

[deleted]

Re: Effect of perceptual load on performance within IDE in people with ADHD symptoms

#66

Post by flir »

dkh wrote: post #64
vanderZwan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unmedicated, I cannot usually even read more than a few pages of a book before either losing focus or feeling drained Tangent: ADHD is strange. I have it too, and yet when it comes to reading my symptoms appear to be the exact opposite (when I was younger I could not stop reading books until I finished them, even if I ended up skipping an entire night of sleep for it). I wouldn't be surprised if in the next decades…

What you describe is how I was when I was younger, too. I read everything, I read pretty fast, and I could read for hours on end. That is no longer the case at all, and I'm uncertain when or why it changed so drastically. (The "when" is tough to pinpoint because for much of my early 20s I wasn't doing much reading, and it's possible that the "why" is related to some change my brain underwent during/because of that.)

When did you start using the internet regularly? (It's possible that you didn't change, it's just that your brain found an easier dopamine delivery system).

Re: Effect of perceptual load on performance within IDE in people with ADHD symptoms

#67

Post by wryoak »

bloopernova wrote: post #34

I have ADD and I'm struggling to write a more complex Python app right now. I'm hating myself for not being able to easily skip around the code as it gets more complex with more classes and methods. So this is very apropos for me. Thing is, I can skip around Terraform much more easily (in my normal DevOps role). I'm wondering if Python whitespace isn't "right" for me somehow. EDIT: I'm definitely more used to Terrafo…

If Terraform is easy for you, you might try another declarative language like something from the ML family (Elm, Haskell, OCaml, etc)

I get along very well with declarative code but find myself struggling through imperative and OOP equivalents

Many imperative languages (including Python) can be written in a declarative style, but it’s a more challenging practice to maintain

Re: Effect of perceptual load on performance within IDE in people with ADHD symptoms

#68

Post by PartiallyTyped »

vidarh wrote: post #63
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps a vim + tmux + magnet (mac app) setup could work for you?

I detest vim far more than I detest overlapping window managers ;) Yabai works ok. It's not ideal but its close enough.

Thanks for the recommendation then, I will check yabai out :3

Re: Effect of perceptual load on performance within IDE in people with ADHD symptoms

#70

Post by TylerE »

dkh wrote: post #60
giantg2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"and why I almost exclusively join small/new teams who don't yet have an enormous codebase that I'll have to wrap my head around." How do you find these teams? In my 11 years, I don't think I've ever found myself on a greenfield project.

I live in Southern California where there was no shortage (until recently, at least) of very early-stage startups, and for years I exclusively used startup-focused sites like AngelList (now Wellfound) when jobhunting. The largest startup had 12 people when I joined. I worked for a company of 40ish once, but they weren't primarily a tech company and engineering consisted of only 3 people. I should perhaps disclaim tha…

Going with, in general, a company with less than 50 employees doesn't have to meet many of the requirements larger ones do when it comes to things like the FMLA.
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