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All good and great but I think it’s a bit misleading. The participants were asked to do LeetCode—which limits this study to the suggested effects of cannabis on arbitrary and abstract programming tasks.
Can't recall where I read this off the top of my head, but wasn't a similar idea tested with musicians? If memory serves correct, the results were that while high, the musicians thought what they were making was great, but when they later revisited it when sober, they thought it was rubbish.
It was some study about usage of cocaine. That's why using drugs is really stupid, they don't enhance your capabilities, they simply give you an illusion of that.
- "enhances creativity and focus" Wait, how do you make cannabis enhance task focus? I'm unfamiliar
I and several other women I know use cannabis to cut the boredom of cleaning. There's definitely an optimum, where your mind wanders and the tedium doesn't accumulate. But a little beyond that optimum, you either get off task or spend an hour on a single teapot. I'm reminded of a recent study on cannabis and running that resonated with me. Running is so boring, but if I'm just a little lit, it's fun and feels great.…
I find it is detrimental when needing to do detail arithmetic, but in high level geometric and abstract relationships it can be a huge benefit.
Can't recall where I read this off the top of my head, but wasn't a similar idea tested with musicians? If memory serves correct, the results were that while high, the musicians thought what they were making was great, but when they later revisited it when sober, they thought it was rubbish.
It was some study about usage of cocaine. That's why using drugs is really stupid, they don't enhance your capabilities, they simply give you an illusion of that.
So we would ask:
"Do you have any programmer's fuel?"
Also related, the phrase "fire an event" is a cannabis reference:
It does seem that people would wrongly associate the artificial influx of positive/warm feelings coming from a cannabis with increased task performance. Not unlike how people overestimate their own strength when drinking alcohol etc. However, if it decreases their performance but improves their feelings towards the work, might that still be a net positive? In other words, if you are going to be a little more pokey an…
Can't recall where I read this off the top of my head, but wasn't a similar idea tested with musicians? If memory serves correct, the results were that while high, the musicians thought what they were making was great, but when they later revisited it when sober, they thought it was rubbish.
It was some study about usage of cocaine. That's why using drugs is really stupid, they don't enhance your capabilities, they simply give you an illusion of that.
could have called it "hashed"
Hashing it Out? Understanding Psychoactive Substance Use in Programming
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was some study about usage of cocaine. That's why using drugs is really stupid, they don't enhance your capabilities, they simply give you an illusion of that.
It depends on the drugs. Amphetamines generally display improved cognitive performances in RCTs.
I take Amphetamines for ADHD and narcolepsy so they obviously improve my performance- but I’ve also worked with people that abused them and felt like they were performing much better than normal but in reality were just delivering (anecdotally) sloppier pull requests at a faster rate.
I have coded many times when high (very rarely on somebody's dime, but it may have happened during Covid few times): you end up doing very little. Occasionally you'll have some crazy idea and follow it, the kind of ideas that you don't have normally. But in general your productivity will be very low and results poor. Don't do any kind of drugs or alcohol if you need your brain to be sharp. It's nonsense.
Speak for yourself
The study is also not about user-facing software development, it's about leetcode algorithmic puzzles as performed mostly by students still in education and without professional experience. Despite their prevalence in interviews and impassioned defense of relevancy, at least I encounter very little of that sort of coding in day to day applications development of any sort.