Do Recreational Drugs Help Programmers?

jfruh writes "Among the winners of last night's election: marijuana users. Voters in both Washington and Colorado approved referenda that legalized marijuana for recreational use, though the drug remains illegal under federal law. There's been a long-standing debate among programmers as to whether recreational drugs, including pot and hallucinagens like LSD, can actually help programmers code. Don't forget, there was a substantial overlap between the wave of computer professionals who came of age in the '60s and that era's counterculture." (There's even a good book on that topic.)

maybe

[pablo_max]

I will program something while not being high and see if it makes a difference, later though. So far I am still collecting data points.

tht depends

[lister king of smeg]

Is the pot free as in beer or free as in speech

Spice

[a-zarkon!]

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains. The stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion

Too distracting

[sl4shd0rk]

*the cat seems to be know something...*
"Dude, did you see where I put that lighter?"
*Must get test routines done for code review tomorrow....*
*Woah.. how'd my browser get on Ebay buying troll dolls?*
"Dude, did you see where I put that lighter?"

I guess we'll see

[JustAnotherIdiot]

Voters in both Washington and Colorado approved referenda that legalized marijuana for recreational use

Valve Corporation is an American video game development and digital distribution company based in Bellevue, Washington, United States.

If HL2:EP3 finally comes out, I guess we'll know what to thank.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

You forget how stunningly crap the spec and use cases you've been provided are?

Re:inpaired thinking = bad coding

[AdmiralXyz]

I would expect code produced under the influence to have more bugs, less comments and generally be an unmaintainable mess.

Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion man.

Obligatory xkcd

[TennCasey]

http://xkcd.com/323/ [xkcd.com]

Re:LSD and Unix

[acariquara]

What about crack cocaine and Windows ME?

Hellz Yeah.

[Lumpy]

When I was on the Windows 8 UI development team, we all were taking Meth and PCP daily. And look at the wonderful and innovative design we came up with!

No

[Chemisor]

This is your code:

int factorial (int n)
{
    int r = 1;
    for (int i = 1; i < n; ++i)
        r *= i;
    return (r);
}

This is your code on drugs:

f(int n){int i=n,r;l:r=(i!=n?r*i:unix);if (--i)goto l;return (r);}

Any questions?

Re:Spice

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I frequently relax at my computer with Sappho-related things.

Re:No

[Chemisor]

So drugs help you use fewer lines & less whitespace? Awesome!

And so you prove my point by failing to notice the bug. Lay off the drugs, man!

Re:maybe

[durrr]

Here's a video of the drugged spiders
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1n15JxrBJ8 [youtube.com]

Re:maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

That's as far as you got? I wrote an entire content management system while stoned.

It worked pretty well, only problem was that I could never remember how it worked for some reason.

Re:No

[ddd0004]

I always thought that minified javascript was run through a minification program to do that, but it was actually being handwritten by Cheech & Chong.

Re:What?

[tftp]

Majority of coding work should be preemptive coding for scalability.

PHB: Listen, Bill, I have a small programming task for you. We need an application that pops a dialog up, asks for a number, and appends that number, as plain text, to a file. Could you put this together before lunch?

Bill: Hey, boss, this is a major undertaking. Since we want to ensure scalability of this application I need to make it so it accepts a form definition language, parses it, executes scripts in another language, and then spits it into a variable, programmable set of databases which could be plain text files as you want, or ODBC connections, or The Cloud. Of course we want strong crypto on all that, and biometric authentication at every step. My team of ten will probably do it within a year or two.

PHB: Bill, are you high?

Re:maybe

[cayenne8]

As I've heard somebody say (my experience confirms it too): "People on drugs think they are creative and productive. Everyone else thinks they are on drugs." The same can be said about alcohol.

I'll drink to that....err....wait...

Re:maybe

[Culture20]

Further proof that the metric system is hazardous to your health.

Re:The other side of the coin

[jhoegl]

No Mountain Dew and you call yourself a programmer?
I doubt your story based on that! :)

Re:maybe

[ColdWetDog]

That's as far as you got? I wrote an entire content management system while stoned.

It worked pretty well, only problem was that I could never remember how it worked for some reason.

Oh, you're the bozo who coded Lotus Notes? At least there was a reason for it.

Re:Caffine

[Chrutil]

was anybody talking to you, faggot? if you value your health, you better shut the fuck up too.

Dude, decaf.