31–40 of 80 posts
Rather than posting this as an 'Ask PG', why don't you actually go read some books on the topic? This reminds me of Randy Cohen talking about all the people who email him asking for permission to do blatantly unethical stuff.
If anything affected my short term memory adversely, I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole.
i cannot get anything done after smoking except for couching, lazy remote operation, eating and sleeping. if i have anything to get done (which is 99% of the time), i don't smoke. my buddy, however, smokes whenever he's awake and is the most productive/brilliant engineer i've ever met, i don't get it.
Can you imagine how weird it would be if people freaked out if they heard you had a beer at lunch or had a beer at 4PM while working from home? Weird to me at least...
Smoke weed if you like but don't kid yourself it's making you better at your work, ezpecially if you do it regularly. If you need stress relief, get good rest and exercise. I've seen several promising friends fizzle and burn out because they started needing to have a smoke for breakfast. Just keep it to the occasional party and try to phase it out completely as you continue the process of growing up.
Sorry for the snark, but when there's clearly a visibility problem, these one-off negative anecdotes given as universal observations and advice are nearly useless.
This seems like a silly question to be aimed at PG. Why would he have any special insight on this? > Development and startups are evolving so fast, and it often feels like you are never adequate. You always need to be learning and using X new language or technology. My startup is the hardest thing I've done so far in my life. Always X is always wrong. There are always exceptions. Often, your always is the exception r…
Dude, that's awesome++
I've smoked ever since I was 14. Most of the time about once a week, at times not smoking for a year, and sometimes all day for months.
Smoking very frequently has a negative effect on me when it comes to business. I have more trouble finding motivation and caring, I am less in control of myself and get along less easily with people.. I become a feral hacker pretty fast.
On the other hand, I find a lot of benefits in smoking occasionally.
It seems pot disconnects you from your "hard-drive". You have problems pulling data that is otherwise readily available, and much that happens when you smoke doesn't seem to get stored at all.
So what's the advantage? Well, it doesn't seem to affect what's in your "RAM". You're like a super AI with a completely fresh storage and barely any data. Now data in most cases is useful, specially when you're trying to reproduce things that worked previously. When you hit a wall though, it can become a burden.
Most of you probably remember the sentence "You must unlearn what you have learned"! Except in this case, you lose factual data, but not cognitive processes. You certainly won't suddenly be able to levitate, but it's amazing what the brain can come up with when you lose track of all the common practices.
I've done a year of math prep in one of EU's hardest universities, and it was amazingly hard. Trying to solve any of the problems while high would lead to a ton of execution mistakes (copying stuff wrong, losing track of what you were doing etc), and was generally bad. Being slightly high for a test would cut my grade in half.
On the other hand, on many occasions, I spent a couple hours attempting to solve something from any possible angle and failed, like solving a rubik's cube and always coming back to the same configuration. Then at some point, later in the day or week, I'd think about that problem again while being high, and have my mind elegantly walk through the complexity of it and see the solution.
I spoke about it with people at that school who smoked, and most of those who were naturals at math seemed to have had the same experience. Ever since, I've had it happen to me on many occasions about different implementation/design challenges. I've worked with other people who were occasional smokers, and sometimes when failing to solve problems (more policical / vision related than technical), mention them again when we were high, and have extremely interesting things come up.
Obviously you want to review / implement / apply those new ideas when you're sober, because you need to run them through your experience and memory extensively, but weed can be a great source when you need an alternate angle of approach.
"smoking weed actually is quite therapeutic. It is an outlet for stress and the never-ending wall of burden. Development and startups are evolving so fast, and it often feels like you are never adequate." My advice? I will fall back on the saying "if you can't take the heat stay out of the kitchen". There are many reasons why someone might have to medicate themselves if they have a situation that is not under their c…
Just my thoughts.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ditto on reliance on food.
To be clear, I am not being facetious. If you want to throw around cut-throat, myopic terms like "crutch", then let me first note that caffeine is a performance-enhancing nootropic; and I've worked with a developer who never once ate lunch in my 6 months working along side him. I personally eat lunch maybe once a week. And honestly, I smirk at people who do eat lunch. And it goes without saying what I think of leisur…
[1] http://archive.is/20120916001237/http://www.smh.com.au/techn...