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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

#231

Post by grumpyprole »

bob1029 wrote: post #122

Even "lite" editors like VSCode, NP++, Sublime Text, etc have become distracting for me. Every time I fire one of these things up, my mental state is eliminated by being forced to dismiss some "hey we got a new version for you :D:D:D" bullshit modal. To whomever is responsible for adding these to apps: please stop. No one is enjoying your shenanigans. It is a text editor . Empathize with the user: People with far les…

Those aren't light editors! I use a bare bones emacs with all the UI turned off. Just a flashing cursor. It helps me focus on the content.

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

#232

Post by still_grokking »

formulathree wrote: post #87
dagmx wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. It really does matter if you have any afflictions that exacerbate it. It maybe doesn’t matter for relative performance versus other developers but it does matter for the individual. Having frequent context switches just to keep on top of your work can be really draining. How much it matters also really depends on the languages you’re working in. Taking a couple languages I use regularly for example: Pytho…

Modern python is no longer dynamic. Type checking is a big part of python now. Python also has ADTs which match it in power to rust.

> Modern python is no longer dynamic.

Of course it still is.

The type hints have no runtime semantics whatsoever.

The actual type-checking still happens at runtime in Python, and is not related to any static checks. Out of the perspective of Python's interpreter the type hints don't even exist. They're like comments…

Static type checking is not part of Python!

> Python also has ADTs which match it in power to rust.

All Turing-complete languages match each other in power…

Besides that:

Python doesn't have a static type system in the first place, so it can't compete with Rust in this regard. That's not even the same game.

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

#233

Post by still_grokking »

formulathree wrote: post #100
dagmx wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Type hinting , not assertion, is a part of Python. Type checking is analysis post facto and doesn’t account for dynamicism of classes. The very ability to self modify an instance at any time or use __getattr__ makes it incredibly dynamic. It also doesn’t account for every dependency having accurate type hints or any at all.

modern python development is used in conjunction with an external type checker. That's what I meant. My mistake for not being clear. Obviously the python interpreter itself does not do any type checks. It's sort if like how modern development with javascript is used with an external compiler of another language (typescript) that compiles a typed language into one without types.

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

#234

Post by janalsncm »

bob1029 wrote: post #122

Even "lite" editors like VSCode, NP++, Sublime Text, etc have become distracting for me. Every time I fire one of these things up, my mental state is eliminated by being forced to dismiss some "hey we got a new version for you :D:D:D" bullshit modal. To whomever is responsible for adding these to apps: please stop. No one is enjoying your shenanigans. It is a text editor . Empathize with the user: People with far les…

Not a text editor but Postman is the worst for that. Every time I open it there’s another damn update, another prompt, another “hey check out this feature” popup. I don’t care.

What I actually want is a gui version of curl. Just let me send my CRUD operation over HTTP. I want it to work and that is all.

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

#235

Post by bern4444 »

naikrovek wrote: post #197
euos wrote: post #143

I am a successful software engineer (20+ years, worked in companies like NVIDIA, had been at Google for the last decade) and I have dyslexia. I was also diagnosed with ADHD a couple years ago but I do not want to take medications as they did not improve my quality of life. Syntax/semantic highlight and animations are the only reason I am in this profession. I do not "read code" - I mostly "parse" the shape of it, rel…

color and shape of segments of code are far more useful to me than reading, once I've already read that code. I need those colors and those shapes. people who say that no one needs syntax highlighting are so myopic that it makes my head spin. oh everyone is exactly like you, are they? no one needs syntax highlighting! no one! 80-column rules are the same, for me. arbitrary nonsense rules made up by people who do not…

This is why like tabs over spaces. I like a tab to be equivalent to 4 spaces. But my coworker may prefer a tab to be 2 spaces. Another may prefer 6 etc.

Tabs let each individual render the code to their liking while keeping everything in sync. Using spaces forces everyone to one person's preference.

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

#236

Post by crtified »

awwaiid wrote: post #169

I couldn't even make it all the way to the end of the title

It is a lot.

"Do coders with ADHD find bloated interfaces annoying?" might be one simplification.

And, of course, we know they can be. To varying degrees, depending upon the type of task the person is doing, the nature of the bloat, and the nuance of that particular persons ADHD symptoms and triggers.

Take away the ADHD factor, and we might still conclude that concentration of focus is impaired by distracting external stimuli, and that what does-or-doesn't constitute "distracting" is entirely context- and nuance- dependent!

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

#237

Post by lokimedes »

bob1029 wrote: post #122

Even "lite" editors like VSCode, NP++, Sublime Text, etc have become distracting for me. Every time I fire one of these things up, my mental state is eliminated by being forced to dismiss some "hey we got a new version for you :D:D:D" bullshit modal. To whomever is responsible for adding these to apps: please stop. No one is enjoying your shenanigans. It is a text editor . Empathize with the user: People with far les…

I still keep TextMate around for hitting flow on specific tasks for this reason.

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

#238

Post by still_grokking »

formulathree wrote: post #182
dagmx wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice it does occur very often. I’d suggest not ascribing your own experience to my own. I’ve been professionally coding in Python for over a decade in very varied codebases. There are tons of libraries in many companies that use dynamic attribute lookups for efficiency reasons, when adapting to different data sources and the like. Or pass through lookups on nested objects. Or they’re dynamically looked up on b…

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

#239

Post by formulathree »

still_grokking wrote: post #232
formulathree wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern python is no longer dynamic. Type checking is a big part of python now. Python also has ADTs which match it in power to rust.

> Modern python is no longer dynamic. Of course it still is. The type hints have no runtime semantics whatsoever. The actual type-checking still happens at runtime in Python, and is not related to any static checks. Out of the perspective of Python's interpreter the type hints don't even exist. They're like comments… Static type checking is not part of Python! > Python also has ADTs which match it in power to rust. A…

>Of course it still is. >The type hints have no runtime semantics whatsoever.

I clarified my meaning in another comment. You're right, I meant to SAY modern development involves type checking with python. But not with the interpreter. My mistake for not being clear.

>All Turing-complete languages match each other in power…

I obviously mean type checking. Additionally what you're saying isn't even true. Not all turing complete languages match in power or capability.

>Python doesn't have a static type system in the first place, so it can't compete with Rust in this regard. That's not even the same game.

Modern python development is done in conjunction with a type checker. Sort of like how modern javascript development is done with typescript. That levels up the game to where python is roughly in the same class as rust when it comes to type correctness.

Depending on the type checker python matches the power of rust, roughly. There are differences, but for ADTs they are pretty similar in capability.

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

#240

Post by dkh »

flir wrote: post #66
dkh wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Way, way earlier. I definitely had different dopamine delivery systems during those years when I wasn't reading a lot. I was doing a lot of things differently n general during that time. But it was surprising and disappointing that I never seemed to regain quite the same reading "abilities" (for lack of a better word) even after years of regular reading again.

Don't get me wrong, I read all the time now, but I can't burn through books like I did back then, I don't read faster than I can subvocalize, and it can be challenging to stay focused or retain what I read.

A few years ago, I spent about nine months reading a single book about Napoleon. It was pretty long, detailed, and complex, so it wasn't intended to be an easy/quick read, but it still took me a pretty long time to get through it while giving it the proper focus. But the annoying part is that a couple years later, I struggle to remember details about Napoleon. I know, memory needs to be practiced and reinforced and such, but I had hoped the length of my immersion in the subject would've done a bit more in this area on its own.

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