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by b_e_n_t_o_n 240 days ago
Not sober at all

I write my best code a little tipsy

2 comments

Hmm... I do a decent job at new, exploratory library code with a glass of wine. Not business logic, not exacting data invariants, nothing I would ever ship to production, but exploring interfaces for a library? Yeah. Asking "What does this really need to do? How do I really wish that I could write the calling/collaborating code?"

I wouldn't trust logic I wrote with alcohol in my system, or any tests that I wrote with alcohol, but getting at the heart of "Why does this library need to exist? What should it actually allow?" is enhanced a tiny bit by a mildly-altered mental state.

Over time, I've decided that it is because I get chatty with wine, and designing a library interface feels like a conversation between me and future engineers who might use said library. And then I stash it away to read and reconsider while sober.

A touch of alcohol turns the overthinking volume down which often leads to more productivity and better code. A not so uncommon ADHD experience. In university of course also sometimes I would do my programming drunk and the result would regularly be that it worked but the solutions would be very odd.

Standard ADHD meds often lead to playing Factorio for 17 hours in a row and forgetting to eat.

>Standard ADHD meds often lead playing Factorio for 17 hours in a row and forgetting to eat.

Ain't that the truth.

I've found that sessions of Factorio lasting 17 hours (or more!) are entirely possible even when a person is completely unfettered by any manner of inebriate or medication.

(It's almost like the birds can hear the loading screen, and that hearing this prepares them for their pre-dawn onslaught of particularly-profound singing.)

The entirety of the dot com bubble recovery was powered by adderall, weed and booze.
I think its good for enhancing taste, fluidity, and creativity, obviously not good for strict engineering but that's not all we do...
So the Ballmer peak is real?
I thought that he was associated more with coke?

Though both of them can combine for a very interesting experience, or so I've heard...

(Nerd snipe: cocethelyne is uniquely cardiotoxic, and is somehow even worse than cocaine. Even amphetamine salts are "healthier".)

> cocethelyne is uniquely cardiotoxic, and is somehow even worse than cocaine

Cocethelyne is the result of mixing cocaine with alcohol… should I be surprised that cocaine plus another substance is worse than cocaine?

It can appear a bit counter intuitive because broadly alcohol is a depressant and cocaine's a stimulant.

The primary "risk" with polydrug abuse (especially uppers + downers) is that you end up taking much more than you would normally, and once the upper wears off, the downer depressed your breathing, pote being fatal.

But with coke + alcohol, even a "normal" quantity of both when combined is far worse. It's a bunch of heart signalling stuff that affects blood pressure and a few other things, in ways that really aren't good. Which is honestly pretty impressive because coke alone is an excellent way to fuck up your heart (credits, Rohin Francis/Medlife crisis, a cardiac surgeon on YouTube who posts way too less because presumably the stress of working for NHS isn't good for a doctor's health either.)

(Iirc alcohol and Tramadol are 2 things to typically never mix with other drugs; there's a matrix chart about drug interactions and these 2 are counter indicated with most other drugs. Weed, funnily and unsurprisingly, has one of the least interactions with other drugs.)

Cocaethylene is a metabolite produced in the liver when both substances are present and it is itself psychoactive.

And no you shouldn't be surprised, mixing two harmful things is often worse than the sum of doing each alone and that should be the base assumption.

It's an xkcd reference
I'm aware ;) I just have "Developers!" living rent-free in my head

Btw there are also the 6 peaks in the Balmer Series, which is another reference if anyone wants to get into it

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balmer_series/)

> So the Ballmer peak is real?

Haha...when I used to golf, 2 beers (American swill, no fancy high alcohol types) was the optimal amount. It was just enough to make me relax, which is so critical for a good golf swing.

I think that people feel that it's real, especially when under the effect. But I highly doubt its real efficiency, and especially its sustainability on long term.

But, it feels good.

It really is