Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Poll: Do you smoke?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 163 posts

Re: Poll: Do you smoke?

#131

Post by novum »

zackattack wrote: post #74

I smoke a lot of weed, but I find that smoking while coding disrupts my working memory, which makes coding difficult. Working memory = the memory you use to keep a lot of stuff in mind at once = "the stack". Having to keep referring to the code to figure out my variable names/whatever, instead of just knowing them off the top of my head, slows me down.

I smoke a lot too and this is spot on about weed making coding much more difficult.

The funny thing is, at work we have a code word for weed - "code". We've been joking about coding for months now...

Re: Poll: Do you smoke?

#133

Post by cosmo7 »

I've given up smoking several times, the last time, successfully, about 3 years ago. The previous attempt was pretty much doomed - it was mid-August 2001 and I was living in lower Manhattan.

The thing that is most difficult about nicotine is that it is intimately connected with the way your brain processes novelty. If you're a smoker and you're learning (say) a new language or API, your body automatically makes you light cigarettes and smoke them; you only become aware that you have been smoking when you're stubbing them out.

Re: Poll: Do you smoke?

#134

Post by drhowarddrfine »

rg wrote: post #44

One day as I lit a cigarette someone said to me, "I used to smoke, and then I realized that I was the smartest person I knew who still smoked, so I quit." Later I thought about this and realized that I was the smartest person I knew who still smoked, so I quit too. Actually thinking about the smokers you know can be an eye-opening comparison.

If you ever noticed, almost all restaurant workers smoke. I notice because I own five.

Re: Poll: Do you smoke?

#135

Post by brandon272 »

geuis wrote: post #30

How is this pertinent to Hacker News?

Under "What to Submit", the HN guidelines read "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.". I think that this certainly qualifies as something that gratifies community curiosity given the activity on the submission.

Re: Poll: Do you smoke?

#136

Post by lacker »

sho wrote: post #123
lacker wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't support his spamming these threads but honestly, "quit smoking" is possibly the best advice you will ever get. Just because of the odds of lung cancer killing you. It's hard to argue with the logic that asks, is it really worth it? I admit, smoking is fun, feels good, enhances your social life, and makes you lose weight. But even so it's asking a lot to make that trade off against your health.

Do you really think I haven't heard that before? That I am not completely informed of the risks? Even a pack-a-day smoker is more likely to die from prostate cancer. Basically, smoking raises your (already high) chance of dying from cancer by something like 50%. I know this. I choose to make the trade-off, since I believe I have a quality of life improvement from smoking. Who knows though, I may change my mind as I g…

Fair enough. Hard for me to argue since I held pretty much exactly your view when I was 22 and smoking.

Nothing really suddenly changed for me. At some point it just seemed like it wasn't as good any more. I figured I would quit for a bit to see how that was, got surprised how hard it was to quit even for a day, and then got scared at how addicted I was and got serious about quitting. It took a couple years of struggling after that and now I wish someone had kicked some sense into me earlier, but I don't know how they could have done that. So I am kind of frustrated in this discussion because I feel like the right thing to do is to really try to convince people to quit smoking, but I don't know how to do that.

Re: Poll: Do you smoke?

#137

Post by ncarlson »

Alex3917 wrote: post #80
humbledrone wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A real vaporizer is certainly smokeless. It vaporizes the oils in the marijuana bud; the marijuana is not supposed to burn. If you've used a vaporizer and it was producing smoke, that means that you had the heat turned up way too high. vapor != smoke

"A real vaporizer is certainly smokeless." There is some research that shows there is still tar in the vapor, albeit less.

Do you have a source?

Re: Poll: Do you smoke?

#138

Post by eugenejen »

menloparkbum wrote: post #106
sho wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alan Carr's "quit smoking the easy way." Read it, actually. Great book. But the problem is, I don't want to quit. I like smoking! It's part of me. I feel no need to justify it. Obviously I am concerned about the health effects but do try and mitigate where I can, plus have some faith that cures will emerge. Don't really know what else to say. Oh yes, do-gooders.. I hate those do-gooders too. However, I'm in Australia…

If I remember in the book he says his technique won't work unless you want to quit. How much are cigs in Australia these days? I just noticed the ones I used to smoke here in SF are up to 7 dollars a pack at my corner store. ($5.50 when I quit) I had the opposite experience in Japan. I smoked the most there. The smokes were cheap and you could smoke nearly anywhere. It was weird if you didn't smoke - and this wasn't…

It is $10 for a pack of Marlboro in NYC.

Re: Poll: Do you smoke?

#139

Post by eugenejen »

markessien wrote: post #55
zitterbewegung wrote: post #7

It would be very detrimental for me to smoke because of the fact that I have asthma.

Actually, if you smoked for 3 months steady, depending on the asthma type you have, your symptoms will get better. Coating your lungs in ash makes them less sensitive to the usual allergens.

Interesting observation. I start suffering from hay fever after quit smoking.

Re: Poll: Do you smoke?

#140

Post by tralfam »

drhowarddrfine wrote: post #134
rg wrote: post #44

One day as I lit a cigarette someone said to me, "I used to smoke, and then I realized that I was the smartest person I knew who still smoked, so I quit." Later I thought about this and realized that I was the smartest person I knew who still smoked, so I quit too. Actually thinking about the smokers you know can be an eye-opening comparison.

If you ever noticed, almost all restaurant workers smoke. I notice because I own five.

Just curious, how much does it cost to purchase a restaurant worker these days?
Post reply on HN