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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

#141

Post by Apocryphon »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #134
thewarrior wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that people thinking that mind altering substances cannot be a useful tool should keep an open mind about it and let those people who are getting real results out of it keep doing their thing. And yes these people do exist. They are not going to be too open about it because of how taboo it is. It’s well known that many of the greatest rock bands, highly productive mathematicians like Paul Erdos and comedians…

> 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…

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...

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

#142

Post by datavirtue »

ineptech wrote: post #100
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.

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 appealing at all.

I have used cannabis extensively on personal projects for inspiration and to make easy but mundane programming tasks interesting for motivation. Refctoring is very boring sometimes, and getting high can keep you focused on how nice it will be to complete it and get to the end result. I often am able to uncover a bit of fun in the refactoring process after smoking.

My personal projects benefit from a pattern of: program for an hour or two (completely engrossed), short video game battle or two, smoke up a bit, program...repeat. I can chew through a tremendous amount of work in a five hours (measured by git commits and the complexity within those commits) that would easily take me weeks in a corporate setting. The pattern or rythum triggers "flow" consistently.

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

#143

Post by beiller »

Smoking helps me through the "grindy" parts of programming, like you have a set goal in front of you with many small tasks and the way they all fit together can be held in your mind in one go. When it comes to idea deadlock, like no architecture is a good fit and you just need to choose the best of the bad paths, cannabis can hinder me greatly. I work on many side projects with a toke or two.

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

#144

Post by 2-718-281-828 »

sheepybloke wrote: post #139
2-718-281-828 wrote: post #116

> Such cannabis usage, however, is in conflict with anti-drug poli- cies currently enacted for many software engineering jobs: 29% of our sample reported they had taken a drug test for a programming- related job, a hiring practice that may limit developer application pools. What? 29% ... seriously? That's outrageous.

I've had to take one for a job because it was a government contractor position. I wonder if that's related to why the response is higher?

that would be the only reason coming to my mind but then that sample would be quite biased. I never heard of that being a thing ever for dev positions.

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

#145

Post by gwbas1c »

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.

You could also be... Tired.

I can't do much of anything that requires concentration once I put my three kids to bed. The nights that my wife is out give me a lot of sympathy for single parents.

(But I will admit that there are times that I've had to just wait until the effects wear off.)

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

#146

Post by kerneloftruth »

TrippinTraveler wrote: post #58

Anecdotal but I'm a "programmer" at BigTech™ and smoke all day every day, and at this point I can't tell if it helps me or hinders me, but when you smoke all the time, most of these stories you are hearing about in the comments don't happen. At this point in my life, it's just a little "pick me up". It's by no means a micro dose as I probably smoke a gram or 2 a day. But when you live high it's a different kind of be…

Interesting. That describes me for the past 20 years. But, I am going to turn 60 next year, and have decided that age 60-90 (God willing) will be different than age 30-60. Key in that is that I have returned to my original weed habits prior to age 30: none until evening time. So far, I'm _really_ liking the change. I still like weed, but I'm not allowing it (or anything) to have that much importance to me, and minimizing false 'dependencies' feels very refreshing.

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

#147

Post by datavirtue »

ineptech wrote: post #140
vlovich123 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard disagree, at least for me. I’ve tried doing lots of different programming tasks and they all take longer. Now it might not be as annoying to do the refactor but it takes more time since I lose track or get distracted. Not sure about the quality of the code either since it’s hard to measure objectively when you’re making mistakes in the moment. Maybe creative technical problem solving it has a benefit. However, f…

I'm not surprised, I think it's just extremely subjective. I mean, I find it extremely hard to focus on a programming task if there's music playing, but I know people who listen to music all day while they work.

I can't even begin to program under the influence of alcohol. Almost brain dead in that regard.

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

#148

Post by haswell »

throwawaygh wrote: post #129
haswell wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve also done both of those jobs, and they have quite a bit in common. The scale of the problems to be solved may be different, and that naturally results in some differences between the roles, but the fundamentals are all the same. It’s unclear what kind of point you’re trying to make and how it had any bearing on the cannabis angle.

> but the fundamentals are all the same. Sure. Also, any job that requires writing English all day has some cross-cutting fundamentals. I'm making a general point about empirical software engineering research: "does the question that's being asked get at the fundamentals that are shared between all programmers, or do we need to be more careful about specifying what we mean when we say 'programmer'?" > It’s unclear wh…

I don’t think there’s any question that some kinds of programming is harder than others. The only thing that seems to be divisive is automatically assuming that the size or prestige of the org is what drives the complexity of the work.

It’s easy to find easy programming work in big shops, and not uncommon to find hard work in small shops.

As I said in my previous comment, there is absolutely a difference between different kinds of work.

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

#149

Post by criticaltinker »

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…

Wow an ounce per week is such a heavy intake, have you noticed any negative impacts for example to your lungs or teeth?

Do you prefer smoking over edibles because of the instant rush versus a slow ramp up?

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

#150

Post by crate_barre »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #7
crate_barre wrote: post #2

I can’t see how you can do anything other than micro-dose cannabis (small hits or low dosage edibles). You just get too high to be productive. But I’m very interested to see if low dosages help.

This is maybe pendantic but there are different types of productivity. If I really need to get one thing done, it does no favors to be stoned. But if you just want to learn, experiment, explore, I find it extremely useful in keeping myself patient and receptive. I learn languages in very much sober place, but learning linux I can be stoned, and maybe it helps? Also if your in this space at all, you just need to modif…

That’s quite true. I’ve sat through a couple lectures/learning tutorials with some wine and managed fine (was more fun).

Taking the edge off is a strategy that works well in moderation since often procrastination is a phenomenon where fear and anxiety can be inhibiting.

Stigma is one of the reasons experimentation has such a bad rap.

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