Code while high, debug while sober. Best of both worlds!
An observational study of programming and cannabis intoxication
81–90 of 112 posts
Re: An observational study of programming and cannabis intoxication
#82All 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.
In terms of programming, LeetCode is quite likely to be harder than your day job. Most developers mid level and upwards from majority of the companies I have held a role in are not spending the majority of their day coding, they're writing specs, doing meetings, providing guidance to their junior counterparts, assisting in support tickets on call, and if you had time, documentation. You were quite lucky to meet 30% t…
> In terms of programming, LeetCode is quite likely to be harder than your day job.
It's orthogonal to your day job. The "cruft" you talk about is how we remove ambiguity and fill in details so that work isn't a series of free-floating gedanken experiments. If you're able to apply codified knowledge like LeetCode to a programming task it means someone else has already done the heavy lifting.
We "lost touch" with DSA knowledge because it turns out that it's easier to work things up from base principles using the scientific method than memorizing crap that worked for the vacuum tube generation. We don't *need* a reductive LUT approach to the process anymore.
Re: An observational study of programming and cannabis intoxication
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Different drugs are different. Lumping them all together is dangerous: - Kids who discover that one wasn't a big deal will then be motivated to try others and see what else they were lied to about (I did, got around to most of my checklist too). - Taboo about drugs in general prevents harm-mitigating conversations from happening that might protect someone from one specific drug or another (I turned out ok because of…
I really really really don’t like the “ideas are harmful” bent of your comment. Saying “drugs are bad” doesn’t harm anyone, even if you disagree, or think that it’s reductive or off base (because it is). Kids who grow up in homes where “harm mitigation” include sanctioned marijuana and alcohol use have worse outcomes than those who don’t.
Harm mitigation isn't about sanctioning anything, it's just about recognizing that sometimes prohibition doesn't work and not making things worse in those cases.
It's about not wrecking somebody's teeth by confiscating their pacifier while they're rolling. It's about not causing overdoses by limiting access to milligram scales (because trying to use a kitchen scale to measure a dose is dangerous). It's about creating an environment where people won't lie to you if you express concern about their habits.
Most drug problems are poor dopamine hygiene or mental health issues of some other kind. Let's focus on that instead of celebrating that somebody is "off the hard stuff" while the root cause remains and wrecks their life through a video game addiction.
If you're not seeing the harms caused by overbroad vilification of drugs in general it's because the people around you who are struggling with a substance problem are hiding it from you due to your attitude about such things. And if they're hiding from you, you can't help them.
Re: An observational study of programming and cannabis intoxication
#84- "enhances creativity and focus" Wait, how do you make cannabis enhance task focus? I'm unfamiliar
use it for years, understand its nuances, learn to recognize an appropriate amount and its effects, and channel them into all the various positive ivities. It definitely works on my machine!
Re: An observational study of programming and cannabis intoxication
#85It 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…
In the short term, for the individual: yes, it could be better to medicate. However in the long run, it ends up giving license to shitty employers to continue being shitty, and perhaps to become even worse. Such employers need to feel the negative consequences of their behavior. Their business needs to suffer from high turnover and poor quality work, and if they don’t change then they need to fold. Businesses are, at…
I'm the farthest thing from a pot advocate there is, but if you imagine saying this about antidepressants it sounds kinda silly.
Re: An observational study of programming and cannabis intoxication
#86Can'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.
reality is reality is reality. those illusions of enhanced capabilities can ultimately influence sober behaviors in a positive way too ya know. sometimes opening eyes to the true reality of the world and inspiring ideas. those ideas may have come to a sober subject as well but who's to say probability works that way. After all, (most?) every lifeform on the world is experiencing a perpetual trip called life from the constant inhalation of oxygen. getting off that wonderful and intoxicating inhalent would definitely lead to the end of an illusion, we all understand that. and so the cycle repeats. the illusion of life effects the next reality in some way, positive or negative, and so existence goes.
Re: An observational study of programming and cannabis intoxication
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really really really don’t like the “ideas are harmful” bent of your comment. Saying “drugs are bad” doesn’t harm anyone, even if you disagree, or think that it’s reductive or off base (because it is). Kids who grow up in homes where “harm mitigation” include sanctioned marijuana and alcohol use have worse outcomes than those who don’t.
Harm mitigation isn't about sanctioning anything, it's just about recognizing that sometimes prohibition doesn't work and not making things worse in those cases. It's about not wrecking somebody's teeth by confiscating their pacifier while they're rolling. It's about not causing overdoses by limiting access to milligram scales (because trying to use a kitchen scale to measure a dose is dangerous). It's about creating…
I think you’re projecting a lot of things that onto me based on the one or two sentences I posted above. To clarify - I do drugs regularly (though I’m avoiding anything powdered until this fentanyl thing blows over), I have lost friends to drug overdoses, I have had friends choose to hide or open up about their problems to me (for whatever reason, people like to keep things a secret when it’s not going well, drugs or not), I live in a place where drugs have been decriminalized and recriminalized and I’m still nominally for decriminalizing them (mostly because I’m an accerationist). People die from taking drugs, they don’t die from video games or from not being handled with enough psychological care when it comes to harms reduction messaging. I was simply commenting that I don’t like the “dangerous ideas” thing and think that it’s very disingenuous to call verbal inclinations dangerous in comparison to methamphetamine or LSD (both of those are fun and dangerous). Different sports leagues, not ballparks.
Hard drugs are dangerous and I’ve seen a lot of people get burnt thinking they can abuse them freely. From time to time I burn myself as well, but have a penchant for stove touching, probably related to the accelerationism thing.
Re: An observational study of programming and cannabis intoxication
#88It 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…
In the short term, for the individual: yes, it could be better to medicate. However in the long run, it ends up giving license to shitty employers to continue being shitty, and perhaps to become even worse. Such employers need to feel the negative consequences of their behavior. Their business needs to suffer from high turnover and poor quality work, and if they don’t change then they need to fold. Businesses are, at…
This is a thinly veiled marxist-style call for collective class action. Aka unionising. I think it’s more dignifying to assume that ppl are capable of judging for themselves whether the solution to a shitty job is getting high, or quitting- without the socialist indoctrination, which is designed to benefit the political leaders who try to galvanise revolutions. Those revolutions typically devolve into unhinged violence, because they fabricate a narrative of anger.
Re: An observational study of programming and cannabis intoxication
#89Can'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.
Methodology makes all the difference in those cases. Artistic output is an extremely complex psychological process and we haven’t comprehensively identified its components. It’s possible that some aspects of the creative process can show a limited benefit from cannabis, as long as they can be isolated from the negative effects.
Re: An observational study of programming and cannabis intoxication
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
In terms of programming, LeetCode is quite likely to be harder than your day job. Most developers mid level and upwards from majority of the companies I have held a role in are not spending the majority of their day coding, they're writing specs, doing meetings, providing guidance to their junior counterparts, assisting in support tickets on call, and if you had time, documentation. You were quite lucky to meet 30% t…
> In terms of programming, LeetCode is quite likely to be harder than your day job. It's orthogonal to your day job. The "cruft" you talk about is how we remove ambiguity and fill in details so that work isn't a series of free-floating gedanken experiments. If you're able to apply codified knowledge like LeetCode to a programming task it means someone else has already done the heavy lifting. We "lost touch" with DSA…
That's great and all, but this is quite irrelevant conjecture, you can argue your point all you want, it does not matter to me. I don't care about what you do, and I probably never will.
The research performed in this study is relevant, and no one so far has demonstrated that it is "misleading", "bad or poor quality research", or really anything to demonstrate to me that it's results are questionable, going back to the parent thats what I address.