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Impact of a Night of Sleep Deprivation on Novice Developers’ Performance (2018)

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Re: Impact of a Night of Sleep Deprivation on Novice Developers’ Performance (2018)

#171
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50% improvement for sleeping vs not sleeping at all.

That honestly seems conservative. The times I've missed an entire night I've been essentially useless or an actual detriment.

I've seen this. Had a co-worker who was up most of a night dealing with a page.

Came into work, wrote some brand new code, and since it was basically all written on that day, and all by him, it was easy to trace back to him / that event.

The whole thing was riddled with bugs, and well below his usual quality level. Most of it got rewritten fairly quick, but yeah, if he'd taken the day off and then written it the next day, time would have been saved.

I feel like it's hard to really know when you're in that state, too. Your mind is too apt to go "I'm fine."

Re: Impact of a Night of Sleep Deprivation on Novice Developers’ Performance (2018)

#172
post #59
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"as a serious health debt" Except, sleep isn't a debt because the loss can't be repaid. This is one of many important things I have picked up from Dr. Matthew Walker who wrote "Why We Sleep" and has been doing the podcast rounds lately. Not to pick on you at all. It sounds like you have made some big realizations and are making fantastic changes. Realizing I can't make up sleep to pay off the "debt" has been eye open…

> Except, sleep isn't a debt because the loss can't be repaid. sort of ? The impact of missed sleep has a half life. A single night of 4 hours sleep, followed by a year of normal nights sleep will lead to a me that is indistinguishable from the me that slept 8 hours that same night. I'm all for sleeping properly, but lets not suggest that it is the end of the world any time someone doesn't get their standard n hours

You should preface your statement with an n = 1.

After a week or two of great sleep, I will feel the effects of even a single night at 6-7 hours. My blood glucose tracking makes this clear (it's going to be north of 100 in fasted state), and if the required work for the day is cognitively challenging, ie. "deep work", it will be distraction city.

Re: Impact of a Night of Sleep Deprivation on Novice Developers’ Performance (2018)

#173
post #26

I've bought recently one of those cheap wrist bands. One of the most important features for me was ability to measure sleep quality in terms of "daily hours of deep sleep," whatever that scientifically means. Over the course of several months, I've been able to identify things which affect my sleep quality: * eating late: bad * drinking late: one beer... not really that bad * answering work emails until midnight: REA…

You get 3+ hours of deep sleep?! I seem to regularly crack 1 hour of deep sleep (tracked by my watch) but that’s it. Anything you’ve done or do to improve the amount you get?

Word of warning, the sleep trackers on the market are not very accurate for tracking sleep phases. Folks like Matthew Walker are pretty adamant about this. You have to measure your electric brain waves to know for sure, not approximations from heartbeat, movement, etc.

My Oura and Fitbit sometimes give wildly different sleep phase readings for the same night. Also, each will sometimes give arbitrarily unexpected readings that leave me scratching my head.

Re: Impact of a Night of Sleep Deprivation on Novice Developers’ Performance (2018)

#174
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. And please note, I'm not prescribing or suggesting anything about the end of the world regarding a single missed night of sleep. I am commenting about the world of ignorance I had regarding sleep prior to a very recent education. If you or other people reading this are unaware of the depth of what sleep research has learned in the past 15 or so years I will point you to this six hour conversation that Dr. Matth…

I don't want to be dismissive, but is there a good TLDR on this, preferably in written form, or any other resources you'd recommend? I'd love to catch up on the science, but listening to six hours of podcast might cut into my sleep!

[deleted]

Re: Impact of a Night of Sleep Deprivation on Novice Developers’ Performance (2018)

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trolling, nor do I feel I'm dismissing it lightly. I'd rather take a relatively minor risk of death than knowingly inflict whatever psychological trauma comes from forcing an infant to sleep alone. I think the horror of this is seriously downplayed by our society. It's relatively safe to leave a baby in a box now, but this hasn't been the case for our deep evolutionary past. If you're a baby being left in a b…

Wow. Psychological trauma? Horror? Freaking out? I'm not sure what makes you think babies experience those things when "forced to sleep alone", but my two kids seemed pretty content in their cribs. Letting your kids share your bed might seem like a lovely thing to do, but I've heard so many friends complain that their kids are still co-sleeping 5+ YEARS later, and that comes with a huge impact on stuff like sleep qua…

> Letting your kids share your bed might seem like a lovely thing to do, but I've heard so many friends complain that their kids are still co-sleeping 5+ YEARS later, and that comes with a huge impact on stuff like sleep quality and having a sex life.

I haven't thought about this in years, but I believe I slept in my parents's bed until I was around 8 years old (at which point I stopped by choice). Perhaps they just never told me, but my parents seemed perfectly happy with the whole thing.

Re: Impact of a Night of Sleep Deprivation on Novice Developers’ Performance (2018)

#176
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk of death with cosleeping is always higher than not cosleeping. It's even higher if either parent drinks or smokes. Of course, these are public health interpretations of the data which are applied across a population. Individual parents need to do their own risk / benefit analysis. Also, people sometimes mean different things by the term "cosleeping". In this thread it seems to be mostly people talking about…

I have found many people in our society treat most risks as black/white, and treat minor risk-taking as a taboo irrespective of potential benefits, while at the same time entirely ignoring serious risks that would be inconvenient to avoid. This goes double for anything related to children. For example, localized air pollution from an idling pickup truck is obviously worse than standing outside near someone smoking, b…

It's much easier to wear shoes than avoid all automobiles.

Public places require shoes for hygiene reasons, not for book-dropping incidents.

Re: Impact of a Night of Sleep Deprivation on Novice Developers’ Performance (2018)

#177
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except, sleep isn't a debt because the loss can't be repaid. sort of ? The impact of missed sleep has a half life. A single night of 4 hours sleep, followed by a year of normal nights sleep will lead to a me that is indistinguishable from the me that slept 8 hours that same night. I'm all for sleeping properly, but lets not suggest that it is the end of the world any time someone doesn't get their standard n hours

>> A single night of 4 hours sleep, followed by a year of normal nights sleep will lead to a me that is indistinguishable from the me that slept 8 hours that same night. Usually. Except if the 4 hours of sleep leads you to crash your car, or run into a pedestrian, or forget your child in a car. In the usual case, a day of missed sleep is normally OK, but when you are responsible for other people (rather than just cod…

> or forget your child in a car.

Ironically people with kids, especially early on, frequently have 4 hours of sleep...if they're lucky.

Re: Impact of a Night of Sleep Deprivation on Novice Developers’ Performance (2018)

#178
post #26

I've bought recently one of those cheap wrist bands. One of the most important features for me was ability to measure sleep quality in terms of "daily hours of deep sleep," whatever that scientifically means. Over the course of several months, I've been able to identify things which affect my sleep quality: * eating late: bad * drinking late: one beer... not really that bad * answering work emails until midnight: REA…

You get 3+ hours of deep sleep?! I seem to regularly crack 1 hour of deep sleep (tracked by my watch) but that’s it. Anything you’ve done or do to improve the amount you get?

As someone mentioned, those trackers aren't that accurate.

However, if you think you don't get much deep sleep, for the love of everything, get tested for sleep apnea. A home sleep study is quick and easy if you have reasonable insurance, and if you do have apnea, getting it treated could literally change your life (or even save it).

Re: Impact of a Night of Sleep Deprivation on Novice Developers’ Performance (2018)

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you have children yet, but I regret to inform you if you don't that significant sleep deprivation is in your future unless you plan to extensively involve caregivers outside of you and your spouse.

Cosleeping can dramatically reduce sleep deprivation for parents. We humans have evolved to cosleep with our babies. In a cosleeping situation the baby does not experience terror (a baby left alone in nature has zero survival chances so this terror is programmed and so leaving a baby to sleep alone is counterproductive and cruel), can feel the warmth and heartbeat of the mother, can feed without and before fully waki…

Can confirm that it slightly reduced my sleep deprivation. However I do not happen to have breasts: if I did then the reduction would have been a great deal less due to a small child wanting access to them. Also sleeping on the couch on work nights _may_ have had something to do with the reduction in my sleep deprivation; my memory is a bit shot from sleep deprivation though so not sure. Also it did not stop night terrors, though they were rare.

Re: Impact of a Night of Sleep Deprivation on Novice Developers’ Performance (2018)

#180
post #16

Programmer in a start-up here. Please do talk about this with your workaholic colleagues as I did! We need to create an industry standard here. Sleep is super important to success and happiness, and I just recently found that sleep is not enough. I need also rest. If I don't have rest and relaxation often I get tired for several days regardless of sleep time. Writing this after deliberate 5 minutes downtime.

This may just be me, but when I was in charge of hiring a team, I ended up passing on sleep-foregoing candidates (often that wasn't the only thing, but it was a big factor for me).

To this day, candidates that don't take care of getting enough sleep just to get things done, raise a red flag for me.

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