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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

#281

Post by s_trumpet »

sodapopcan wrote: post #135
dkh wrote: post #16

As an engineer for 10+ years with pretty severe ADHD (unmedicated, I cannot usually even read more than a few pages of a book before either losing focus or feeling drained) I have always been aware of how much my performance fluctuates based on the cognitive load of dealing with the code I am currently working with, and how it is displayed. I half-jokingly tend to describe it to people as having a "small brain buffer…

> why I try to keep functions/modules as simple as possible and ideally not longer in length than I can see on my screen at once (when possible) This is the paradox of "readable" code. Each person has a different definition of it. I also prefer to write as dumb code as possible (well, these days I do, I of course tried to be extra clever in my earlier days). But for me it's the jumping around that makes me lose focus…

At my firm we’ve standardized on import being used only for a short list of well known first/third party modules (e.g. Ecto.Query and Plug.Conn).

Application modules can be aliased, but not library modules. This is so that we don’t need to keep repeating the name of the application throughout the codebase while preserving clarity as much as possible.

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

#282

Post by s_trumpet »

sodapopcan wrote: post #230
Saturn5 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a colleague that loves to call functions things like ‘convert_object_type_from_mm_to_m’ and ‘convert_object_type_from_m_to_mm’ . It’s unscannable. They’re the same to me. He does not like my ‘meter_to_mm’ and ‘mm_to_meter’ because the abbreviations are inconsistent, no verb is used and he needs to go all the way to the typehint to know the input. We both have a point, but there is not really a clear middle gro…

Ya, that is ridiculous, honestly. While it's still all subjective, you gotta draw the line somewhere! I'm a stickler for consistency myself and would be ok with `meter_to_millimeter` but the `convert_object_type_from_` is pure nonsense. Like, assuming you're talking about a language with objects, what the heck else would you be converting?? EDIT: requiring verbs in function names is also overrated. It's one of those…

I’d personally go with a single function like “convert_object_type” and pattern match into different clauses such as “convert_object_type(obj, from: m, to: mm)” and so on.

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

#283

Post by s_trumpet »

dkh wrote: post #64
vanderZwan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unmedicated, I cannot usually even read more than a few pages of a book before either losing focus or feeling drained Tangent: ADHD is strange. I have it too, and yet when it comes to reading my symptoms appear to be the exact opposite (when I was younger I could not stop reading books until I finished them, even if I ended up skipping an entire night of sleep for it). I wouldn't be surprised if in the next decades…

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.)

I managed to slowly claw it back by completely changing my reading method. I download ebooks on my phone and read in 5-10 min chunks throughout the day (where I’d normally be using social media or checking the news) followed by 1 hour at the end.

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

#284

Post by s_trumpet »

julianeon wrote: post #195
asyx wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you do about it? I'm exclusively a vacation reader. When I have limited free time, reading competes with other hobbies or media and almost never wins just because a book is such a huge time investment compared to a movie or a video game and I'd really like to change that.

I keep a book near me while working. I can't really 'break' on the computer because that's where the work is happening. But I can push down the laptop screen for a little while and read for 10 minutes, no problem. A physical book is a different modality, different everything, and sticky enough to keep my interest but not so sticky I'll lose an hour without noticing. Do that 2 or 3 times during your workday and you'll…

I use a similar technique with ebooks on my phone.

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

#285

Post by DoingIsLearning »

dkh wrote: post #248
hirvi74 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an engineer for 10+ years with pretty severe ADHD (unmedicated... How did you do it? I wasn't diagnosed until my early adulthood, but even with medication, I feel like I can barely keep my head above water.

I was diagnosed and treated young (around 12-13). I was not very well controlled at all at the time, and wouldn't be until my 20s, but I at least was aware of the problem and seeing a doctor regularly from that point on. Everyone is different, but the key things for me were 1) never settling medication-wise until I found something that truly worked well for me (a process that took years but well-worth it) and 2) util…

> 1) never settling medication-wise until I found something that truly worked well for me

Diving into the detail, what medication have you tried and how did it work/not work for you?

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

#286

Post by steve_adams_86 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #99
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To expand on that, I think it can be clarified somewhat by describing the mechanism at work. People without ADHD have a generally-working motivation/reward system which is undergirded partially by dopamine. This neurotransmitter is relatively low in ADHD brains, which seems to lead to signal:noise issues. That’s likely a cause of having a highly distractible baseline state, but also leads to bursts of dopamine seemin…

Thank you for this very straightforward and concise explanation I'm almost 40 and just realizing that I probably have some version of ADHD and your description of the Dopamine roller-coaster fits perfectly with my experience, both good and bad.

I highly recommend reading up on it if that particular aspect resonates with you. Driven to Distraction is a very useful and informative read with a decent amount of technical information as well as personal accounts to help relate how the condition manifests.

It’s very diverse. It isn’t always bad, but often is, and even people with god outcomes can often benefit from the insight of understanding why they’re different.

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

#287

Post by vanderZwan »

ck425 wrote: post #116
vanderZwan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unmedicated, I cannot usually even read more than a few pages of a book before either losing focus or feeling drained Tangent: ADHD is strange. I have it too, and yet when it comes to reading my symptoms appear to be the exact opposite (when I was younger I could not stop reading books until I finished them, even if I ended up skipping an entire night of sleep for it). I wouldn't be surprised if in the next decades…

Could that be a learned adaption to ADHD rather than a directly caused trait? Or just hyper focus? I do have a pet theory that many of us ADHDers develop habits to overcompensate but do so early enough that we don't realise they're learned. For example my room growing up was always super tidy, I literally never had to be asked to clean it and I'd know straight away if someone had been in while I was out. That really…

It was definitely not an adaption - I was intrinsically motivated to keep going and read where the story was going, or what exciting new thing I could learn (my parents gave me a children's encyclopedia for my tenth birthday that I would carry around and read everywhere). So hyper focus on the dopamine hit of learning something new, I guess.

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

#288

Post by psd1 »

rahen wrote: post #10

This reminds me of how Rob Pike mentioned his dislike for syntax coloring as extra cognitive load, which seems odd in regards to current IDEs filled with information and stimuli. With LLMs now directly interfaced to IDEs, it is likely that any obstacle will trigger a need for immediate AI powered dopamine reward. I wonder how programmers brains are going to rewire in this regard, even for those not subject to ADHD, b…

No, IDEs do not give you ADHD. ADHD has a clinical definition and a physiological cause in a region of the brain.
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