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Autism and Programmers

hossgifford.com

11–20 of 28 posts

Re: Autism and Programmers

#11
post #2

Lou has to have the right music in his head to spot his patterns and I, like many developers, have experience of getting into the zone with the help of familiar ambient music. It’s as if the regularity of the music, it’s lack of surprising contrast, drowns out the rhythmless noise of our environment. The alternative is to completely remove all noise... Any suggestions on this kind of ambient music? Thanks! EDIT: I'm…

I often listen to...

David Sylvian - Look for albums: "Camphor", "Alchemy" & "Approaching Silence"

Brian Eno - His Ambient collection.

and some varied classical music.

Strangely when I get into rhythm I tend to switch to something more "driving" like Radiohead

Re: Autism and Programmers

#12
post #2

Lou has to have the right music in his head to spot his patterns and I, like many developers, have experience of getting into the zone with the help of familiar ambient music. It’s as if the regularity of the music, it’s lack of surprising contrast, drowns out the rhythmless noise of our environment. The alternative is to completely remove all noise... Any suggestions on this kind of ambient music? Thanks! EDIT: I'm…

I often listen to... David Sylvian - Look for albums: "Camphor", "Alchemy" & "Approaching Silence" Brian Eno - His Ambient collection. and some varied classical music. Strangely when I get into rhythm I tend to switch to something more "driving" like Radiohead

Well, my classical music (e.g. Beethoven 9th, Mozart Magic Flute that kind of thing) is too exciting, actually. What's yours?

Re: Autism and Programmers

#13
post #10
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I'll play trance ambient just loud enough to smooth over the environmental noise while coding: http://www.hbr1.com/perl/apax.cgi?run=jorbis&station=

Same for me. Trance is a good coding music. I get mine from http://www.trance.fm

Also check out http://ddance.fm

Re: Autism and Programmers

#14
post #2

Lou has to have the right music in his head to spot his patterns and I, like many developers, have experience of getting into the zone with the help of familiar ambient music. It’s as if the regularity of the music, it’s lack of surprising contrast, drowns out the rhythmless noise of our environment. The alternative is to completely remove all noise... Any suggestions on this kind of ambient music? Thanks! EDIT: I'm…

Am I the odd one out in listening to jazz while I code?

Re: Autism and Programmers

#15
post #8
post #5

But what happens if you create a concentration of left brain thinkers? Imagine if an industry sprang up that relied on such people, resulting in a dense population of super-geeks. So dense that they started breeding little geeks. If autism is genetic, as it we are starting to believe it is, would this not cause an increase in the cases of people being born with traits from the autistic spectrum? This theory was propo…

Autism is more complex than that. See for example http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=vitamin-d-a... . One of the big mysteries is that Somali immigrants to the US and Sweden have a much higher rate of autism than their native counterparts. Other factors implicated include increasing parents age at time of birth(mother's and father's), more frequent ultrasounds, more chemical environment, etc. Once you s…

> One of the big mysteries is that Somali immigrants to the US and Sweden have a much higher rate of autism than their native counterparts.

Given that Somalia lacks a government, I would imagine health care there is rudimentary, and it's likely that autism (and other conditions) is under-diagnosed.

Re: Autism and Programmers

#16
post #2

Lou has to have the right music in his head to spot his patterns and I, like many developers, have experience of getting into the zone with the help of familiar ambient music. It’s as if the regularity of the music, it’s lack of surprising contrast, drowns out the rhythmless noise of our environment. The alternative is to completely remove all noise... Any suggestions on this kind of ambient music? Thanks! EDIT: I'm…

Here's a few related threads:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=139901

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=167076

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=132026

Re: Autism and Programmers

#17
This whole autism-geek connection is a useless myth. I have a son with autism, and we know a lot of parents with autism. Parents come from every income range, social class, profession and "geek orientation".

And contrary to another myth, most autistic kids (the vast majority) have no savant skills. It is a disease. The ones who recover do tell how they felt trapped inside.

For those of you who have young children or planning to have children, here is a suggestion: investigate just how many vaccines we are giving kids these days, and compare that to how many were given 25-30 years ago. Educate yourself - I wish I had. I trusted the "system" implicitly, without realizing that the average doctor and certainly the average pediatrician is an unthinking protocol pusher. The average pediatricians typical workload could be automated. Enough said.

Re: Autism and Programmers

#18

This whole autism-geek connection is a useless myth. I have a son with autism, and we know a lot of parents with autism. Parents come from every income range, social class, profession and "geek orientation". And contrary to another myth, most autistic kids (the vast majority) have no savant skills. It is a disease. The ones who recover do tell how they felt trapped inside. For those of you who have young children or…

For those of you who have young children or planning to have children, here is a suggestion: investigate just how many cellphones we carry around these days, and compare that to how many were around 25-30 years ago.

Re: Autism and Programmers

#19

This whole autism-geek connection is a useless myth. I have a son with autism, and we know a lot of parents with autism. Parents come from every income range, social class, profession and "geek orientation". And contrary to another myth, most autistic kids (the vast majority) have no savant skills. It is a disease. The ones who recover do tell how they felt trapped inside. For those of you who have young children or…

How many vaccines do kids get these days vs. how many were given 30 years ago?

Re: Autism and Programmers

#20

This whole autism-geek connection is a useless myth. I have a son with autism, and we know a lot of parents with autism. Parents come from every income range, social class, profession and "geek orientation". And contrary to another myth, most autistic kids (the vast majority) have no savant skills. It is a disease. The ones who recover do tell how they felt trapped inside. For those of you who have young children or…

Seriously, while I feel for you, get the facts. There is no evidence linking autism to vaccines. While dosing frequency has increased, dosing volume has decreased. Not only that, even if you are right, a lot more kids would die from the vaccinated diseases if we lose herd immunity as a whole.

Don't you find it the least bit suspicious that the only people who "figured out" this mystery are quacks with books and supplements to sell? Isn't it much more likely to be caused by our terrible food, chemical-laced water or other modern issues like proximity to high-strength EM?

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