I find beer is good for the menotenous code-monkey esq work.
Design work or anything where you're trying to solve a problem.. definitely want a clear mind for that. Tend to avoid caffeine as well (I find it trashes my ability to think and concentrate.. )
Speak for yourself - I still have code I wrote while blacked out that I don't have a clue how I did it (that was college though - I don't drink and code anymore). One chunk was a fantastic blitter optimization, but it was tied to the hardware of that era and wouldn't work today (and blitters would only really be used on phones and handhelds if they were used).
I agree on coffee, but cigarettes are bad for me (and not because of the cancerous parts - years of working in smoky bars and then not being around sm
"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."
Oh come on, it's bad enough that I have to put up with Apple fanboys/haters on a regular basis on this site, but introducing Laphroaig fanboys/haters is taking it to a whole new level!
Having said that, I prefer Laphroaig to all the alternate suggestions that people have replied with (which I find too bland). However, I recently introduced a friend to my personal favourite, 10yo Springbank [springbankdistillers.com], and she said it was the best whisky she'd ever tasted.
Bruichladdich Waves [royalmilewhiskies.com] is my favourite so far of the Islay whiskies, and I've been meaning to pick up a bottle of it for a while now. My least favourite is Bunnahabhain, which isn't peaty enough for my liking.
Springbank also do an 'Islay-style' whisky called Longrow [springbankdistillers.com], which is also worth trying.
For me it depends on the type of task. A bottle of good rosé helps me come up with elegant architectures, a few bottles of beer help me hack together wicked prototypes in no time. Bug hunting, on the other hand, never works for me in combination with alcohol. Everything else works either way.
I figure that I have a hard enough time with real life that I don't need to handicap myself further by slowing down my central nervous system... even temporarily. So my answer is 0. (Mind, I'm still working on the caffeine part of the situation, so I'm not nominating myself for sainthood as yet.)
While it's true that any amount of alcohol > 0 impairs cognitive abilities, there are types of work (including coding) that I find easier to do after a few drinks. I think the reason is that I have a weird fear of failure, that pretty much paralyzes me often and makes me procrastinate for days on end... Being a little drunk takes the edge off, I think, so I can actually get to work (which I usually enjoy, once I start doing it).
Beer-coding is fun. Especially the next day, when you see your beer-code and think: "this must be either the stupidest code ever written, or just plain brilliant."
The drunken mind is brilliant at dealing with the part of the problem it understands and ignoring absolutely everything that it doesn't. Sometimes you need that when you take your first swing at a problem. Writing a final implementation is about the finesse of a sober mind and the perspective of remembering how you screwed it up when you tried last time.
My anecdotal experience in university was that it allowed me to focus longer (whereas with caffeine I was more likely to get distracted) and short term memory was not affected. Of course there is a difference between smoking sativa vs indica or hybrids. It was most likely pure sativa or hybrid that was biased towards sativa as I didn't experience the "couch lock" associated with indica. I attended a University in BC (Canada), that had 420 meetings every Wednesday on campus. Marijuana use was pretty common o
That only a third of you believe that sober coding is a virtue, would explain a great deal about the software I've been suffering through for most of my career. Save your beers for when your coding is done, and save me hours of pain and rewriting.
I tend to agree, 30 years of coding has taught me that coding when drinking, excessively tired or distracted is nearly always a bad idea, no matter how brilliant you think you are at the time the end result is nearly always subpar.
My College Professor for my first class as a freshmen (Advanced Computer Science 1 at the Rochester Institute of Technology) told us during the first couple weeks of class that your best code will be written when you are on that thin line between tipsy and drunk; get to that point and then keep drinking to maintain that level and that would be perfect. I tend to agree with him.
Best coding ideas yes, best actual code not so much. I rewrote a fair amount of my alcohol induced code when in college since it was quicker to rewrite it than correct all of typos, bugs and other stupid mistakes.
I find that the part of my brain that does coding is the first to turn off after any amount of alcohol. Drinking happens after I've finished for the day.
I lose interest to code after even a single beer. Beer makes me want to talk to other people (even about coding). It makes me enjoy some TV shows/movies more. But what's the point of coding drunk? Seems like a waste of beer.
You see, this is the thing. You go out, drink X beers, then when you get home after a night out, that's when you have the epiphany that lets you tackle that problem you've been wrestling with for a while.
You can end up with some pretty interesting (working) code, good lucky following it the next week, however.
I'm a full believer of altered mental states leading you to think "outside the box". What you may have written off as being stupid (whilst sober) without trying it may get tried anyway, and even possibly work.
I wouldn't say that it necessarily leads to better code, my code quality in such circumstances has generally been pretty nasty, but I find i'm more willing to experiment with ideas that would have previously been discarded.
I suppose "Gimme a double" could refer to hard liquor, but I was thinking in terms of data types (along with the float).
I don't often drink while programming, but on occasion I'll have a shot or two of some whisky/scotch/brandy (whatever I most recently bought) just to take the edge off, and I find it helps me to settle down. I usually only drink beer when I'm going to be chilling out (watching football or a movie), not when I have to think too hard. Even then, I only have 1 or 2.
Oh don't be so silly. We "got" you a long time ago. . Now, {Start COMMAND mode} go stare at your phone, and remember, "Resistance is futile." {End COMMAND mode}
I worked in place (eSniff which became Vericept) that had a beer fridge. The founder and original CEO had a beer fridge in his basement when he started the company because he enjoyed having a beer from time to time. When the company grew and moved to bigger and better digs, the beer fridge came along. Typically, no one drank until after 4:00 pm unless there was a really good reason to celebrate (e.g., code release, big contract win, etc.). The impact on morale was huge and the tradition of not drinking until late in the day meant that most of the code was developed by sober programmers.
Sadly, as the company grew and became more corporate, the beer fridge was only VERY infrequently stocked and eventually "dried up" completely. As the QA manager for most of this period, I can testify that the quality of the code went down after the beer fridge went dry.
the lack of any non binary choices made me feel like the choices were meant to be read that way. Choices make a lot more sense when they are 0-5 beers too.
1) Another Beer 2) 99 Beers (as in the song, and yes I know they were going for the binary thing, but singing songs while drinking beer may be conclusive to coding. Further studies are required.)
1) Another Beer
2) 99 Beers (as in the song, and yes I know they were going for the binary thing, but singing songs while drinking beer may be conclusive to coding. Further studies are required.)
I have a single brewing coffee machine and a half gallon of chocolate ice cream. A scoop of ice cream and a double shot of coffee at 6am and I'm good to go.
Never acquired a taste for beer. I prefer cider (alcholic apple cider), as well as other alcoholic drinks like table wines, fortified wines, spirits and liqueurs.
Butterscotch Schnapps, mmmmm.
So best after 0 beers - I never code any other way.
In an episode of "Cheers," Cliff Clavin the trivia-spouting, quirky, irksome mama's boy mailman is seated at the bar describing the buffalo theory to his buddy, Norm Peterson, the beer loving heavyweight bar stool sitting perpetual patron.
Cliff expounds his "Buffalo Theory" to Norm.
"Well, you see, Norm, it's like this. A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it's the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is goo
A modern multitasking environment allows me to upload microquantities of beverage (i/o intensive but not processor intensive) while also synthesizing complex algorithms (cpu intensive) and performing visual analysis tasks (gpu intensive). Occasional requests for data mining (memory intensive) tend to hit a lower interrupt which may preempt synthesis and visual tasks, but rarely preempt i/o tasks.
Intense laboratory testing has shown that uploading integer quantities of beverage (101 be
Usually when I drink it makes me sleepy. But a beer or two make me more daring. I code without worrying if what write it will integrate the rest of the code. One out of ten it leads to new insights. The remaining 9 times I rewrite the code the next day.
I agree that alcohol can loosen mental barriers and sometimes lead to breakthroughs. I've never coded while drinking, but, sometimes, after a few beers at the end of the day, a breakthrough has just come out of nowhere. It's usually not how to code something, but more a "big picture" illumination, and I see a way out of whatever pit I was digging myself into.
I read recently the J. S. Bach did much of his composing while drinking in the evenings. In the morning he would go through his ideas and keep the goo
Is it bad that I noticed you declared 2 is a single-precision float? (0x00000082... and no, that's not an IEEE-standard float. I'll let you figure out what I mean.)
Two wrights don't make a rong, they make an airplane. Or bicycles.
You must be new here... (Score:3)
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I prefer the infinite loop generated by just toggling the last bit with xor.
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No, no... the loop is 100, 101, 111, 110, 010, 011, 001, 000, 100.
Beer is for gaming (Score:4, Insightful)
Coffee and (sorry) cigarettes are for coding.
Weed is for being artistic. (but not exacting, so it doesn't work well for most coding.)
Acid is for talking to God.
. . .
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I find beer is good for the menotenous code-monkey esq work.
Design work or anything where you're trying to solve a problem .. definitely want a clear mind for that. Tend to avoid caffeine as well (I find it trashes my ability to think and concentrate.. )
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I tend to agree with Jonathon Coulton: Code Monkey love Tab and Mountain Dew. Especially to wash down 5-Hour Energy and Red Bull. And caffeine tabs.
I'm surprised my heart hasn't exploded yet.
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Speak for yourself - I still have code I wrote while blacked out that I don't have a clue how I did it (that was college though - I don't drink and code anymore). One chunk was a fantastic blitter optimization, but it was tied to the hardware of that era and wouldn't work today (and blitters would only really be used on phones and handhelds if they were used).
I agree on coffee, but cigarettes are bad for me (and not because of the cancerous parts - years of working in smoky bars and then not being around sm
Re:Beer is for gaming (Score:5, Funny)
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This is the funniest comment I've read on /. in a LONG time. Thank you for a hearty laugh (stifled because my roommate is asleep, but still)
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The juice of sapho.
"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."
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Coffee and (sorry) cigarettes are for coding.
In my days, guarana syrup mixed into Dr.Pepper did a good job too.
CC.
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Beer is for troubleshooting. I have a history of finding(and fixing) bugs after exactly one beer.
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Nice leap from 'being artistic' to 'talking to god'!
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That reminds me of something a friend of mine said [bash.org] once on IRC...
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NOW we know why all code is terrible!
Mine's a Laphroaig 10 (Score:3)
Straight, mind, and sip it.
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I'm not so much on the taste of creosote... now a Glenlivet 15, straight (maybe 2 drops of water) I could go for any time.
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...(maybe 2 drops of water)
Heresy, in the words of my Scottish Aunt.... "But that would dilute it!
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Oh come on, it's bad enough that I have to put up with Apple fanboys/haters on a regular basis on this site, but introducing Laphroaig fanboys/haters is taking it to a whole new level!
Having said that, I prefer Laphroaig to all the alternate suggestions that people have replied with (which I find too bland). However, I recently introduced a friend to my personal favourite, 10yo Springbank [springbankdistillers.com], and she said it was the best whisky she'd ever tasted.
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For non-bland whisky if you don't like Laphroaig, I'd try something from Bowmore or Lagavulin or Bruichladdich. The latter are especially inventive.
I mean to try Ardbeg and Talisker one of these days.
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Bruichladdich Waves [royalmilewhiskies.com] is my favourite so far of the Islay whiskies, and I've been meaning to pick up a bottle of it for a while now. My least favourite is Bunnahabhain, which isn't peaty enough for my liking.
Springbank also do an 'Islay-style' whisky called Longrow [springbankdistillers.com], which is also worth trying.
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I've had Balvenie Double-Wood, which was rather good, and Highland Park, which is excellent. I'm still more a fan of Islays.
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Give me Glenmorangie or give me death!
are you taking the piss (Score:2)
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All measurements in binary (Score:3)
. . . So I answered 10 or decimal 2.
Is this a joke? (Score:2)
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Chemical filters... (Score:2)
I figure that I have a hard enough time with real life that I don't need to handicap myself further by slowing down my central nervous system... even temporarily. So my answer is 0. (Mind, I'm still working on the caffeine part of the situation, so I'm not nominating myself for sainthood as yet.)
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Beer code the next day. (Score:2)
Beer-coding is fun. Especially the next day, when you see your beer-code and think: "this must be either the stupidest code ever written, or just plain brilliant."
Usually it is the former.
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https://www.ubersoft.net/comic/hd/1999/11/phil-quits-stalling [ubersoft.net]
THC - To Help Coding (Score:2)
Marijuana does a surprisingly good job of letting you see things from a different perspective. Highly recommended! ;)
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In that case, the DEA has been notified.
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Well it is good at helping one improve ones rationalization skills.
Actually after 102... (Score:2)
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There are 10 kinds of people. Those who understand binary, and those who do not.
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I'll have a double
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Crap, they already made that pun... and I just realized that I subconsciously skip reading the CowboyNeal option on polls.
Drinking and coding... (Score:3)
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College Professor (Score:2)
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when you are on that thin line between tipsy and drunk; get to that point and then keep drinking to maintain that level
Known as the Balmer Peak [xkcd.com], a goal that is more often not achieved, though not through a lack of effort.
No beers for me thanks, (Score:2)
Beer switches on my social mode (Score:2)
I lose interest to code after even a single beer. Beer makes me want to talk to other people (even about coding). It makes me enjoy some TV shows/movies more. But what's the point of coding drunk? Seems like a waste of beer.
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You see, this is the thing. You go out, drink X beers, then when you get home after a night out, that's when you have the epiphany that lets you tackle that problem you've been wrestling with for a while.
You can end up with some pretty interesting (working) code, good lucky following it the next week, however.
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I'm a full believer of altered mental states leading you to think "outside the box". What you may have written off as being stupid (whilst sober) without trying it may get tried anyway, and even possibly work.
I wouldn't say that it necessarily leads to better code, my code quality in such circumstances has generally been pretty nasty, but I find i'm more willing to experiment with ideas that would have previously been discarded.
Programmer's drinking song (Score:2)
Ninety Nine bugs in the code
You fix one bug, compile it again
One Hundred and Two little bugs in the code
(repeat until bugs == 0)
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99 buckets of bits on the bus
99 buckets of bits
Take one down, short it to ground
98 buckets of bits on the bus
Just to be sure, we ARE counting in pints, right? (Score:2)
Missing option - Hard Liquor (Score:2)
I don't often drink while programming, but on occasion I'll have a shot or two of some whisky/scotch/brandy (whatever I most recently bought) just to take the edge off, and I find it helps me to settle down. I usually only drink beer when I'm going to be chilling out (watching football or a movie), not when I have to think too hard. Even then, I only have 1 or 2.
And then, the nurses attacked: (Score:2)
I'm more of a sysadmin than a coder. I need the paranoia waaaaaay too much coffee gives me.
Because they actually ARE out to get me.
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Oh don't be so silly. We "got" you a long time ago. .
Now, {Start COMMAND mode} go stare at your phone, and remember, "Resistance is futile." {End COMMAND mode}
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Dude, root priviledge fail.
"sudo go stare at your phone."
Beer fridge (Score:3)
I worked in place (eSniff which became Vericept) that had a beer fridge. The founder and original CEO had a beer fridge in his basement when he started the company because he enjoyed having a beer from time to time. When the company grew and moved to bigger and better digs, the beer fridge came along. Typically, no one drank until after 4:00 pm unless there was a really good reason to celebrate (e.g., code release, big contract win, etc.). The impact on morale was huge and the tradition of not drinking until late in the day meant that most of the code was developed by sober programmers.
Sadly, as the company grew and became more corporate, the beer fridge was only VERY infrequently stocked and eventually "dried up" completely. As the QA manager for most of this period, I can testify that the quality of the code went down after the beer fridge went dry.
Cheers,
Dave
Anyones else read the choices as binary (Score:2)
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... that's the joke...
Missing Options... (Score:2)
1) Another Beer
2) 99 Beers (as in the song, and yes I know they were going for the binary thing, but singing songs while drinking beer may be conclusive to coding. Further studies are required.)
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1) Another Beer
2) 99 Beers (as in the song, and yes I know they were going for the binary thing, but singing songs while drinking beer may be conclusive to coding. Further studies are required.)
11000110 Beers on the wall.
Chocolate Ice cream and Coffee (Score:2)
I have a single brewing coffee machine and a half gallon of chocolate ice cream. A scoop of ice cream and a double shot of coffee at 6am and I'm good to go.
Used to be a Stoner (Score:2)
Then I started coding and then the drinking began
float (Score:2)
Root beer float, that is. !alcohol
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That was the direction of my thinking as well.
Can't stand it (Score:2)
Never acquired a taste for beer. I prefer cider (alcholic apple cider), as well as other alcoholic drinks like table wines, fortified wines, spirits and liqueurs.
Butterscotch Schnapps, mmmmm.
So best after 0 beers - I never code any other way.
Trying to reach the Ballmer Peak huh... (Score:2)
Ob. XKCD [xkcd.com]
i gather.... (Score:2)
Cheers! (Score:2)
In an episode of "Cheers," Cliff Clavin the trivia-spouting, quirky, irksome mama's boy mailman is seated at the bar describing the buffalo theory to his buddy, Norm Peterson, the beer loving heavyweight bar stool sitting perpetual patron.
Cliff expounds his "Buffalo Theory" to Norm.
"Well, you see, Norm, it's like this. A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it's the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is goo
Its the same every morning (Score:2)
QTY 2.0 (Score:2)
A modern multitasking environment allows me to upload microquantities of beverage (i/o intensive but not processor intensive) while also synthesizing complex algorithms (cpu intensive) and performing visual analysis tasks (gpu intensive). Occasional requests for data mining (memory intensive) tend to hit a lower interrupt which may preempt synthesis and visual tasks, but rarely preempt i/o tasks.
Intense laboratory testing has shown that uploading integer quantities of beverage (101 be
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Too bad. I'd like to know how they would turn caffeine into beer.
So, caffeine isn't helping me figure out a way to (Score:2)
Guess it'll take a long night to figure this out.
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make a proper BigDecimal beer pun. Guess it'll take a long night to figure this out.
Well, if you go to pre-decimal that could be a pint of McEwans 80/- [flickr.com]
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Coffee?
What the hell are you doing on Slashdot?!
HERETIC!!!
Get 'em!.... ... one of these [thinkgeek.com] quick
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Ditto for me too. I suck in coding. :(
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In spelling as well :P
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Under a desk?
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Ah, thanks. English isn't my strong point/area. :(
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I find my Ballmer peak is at 2.71828 beers.
Is that equivalent to taking MDMA?
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AAAHHH MY CODE IS MELTING!!!
Chocolate goodness: (Score:2)
But I have asthma!
Guess I'll just have to bake brownies.
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Usually when I drink it makes me sleepy. But a beer or two make me more daring. I code without worrying if what write it will integrate the rest of the code. One out of ten it leads to new insights. The remaining 9 times I rewrite the code the next day.
I agree that alcohol can loosen mental barriers and sometimes lead to breakthroughs. I've never coded while drinking, but, sometimes, after a few beers at the end of the day, a breakthrough has just come out of nowhere. It's usually not how to code something, but more a "big picture" illumination, and I see a way out of whatever pit I was digging myself into.
I read recently the J. S. Bach did much of his composing while drinking in the evenings. In the morning he would go through his ideas and keep the goo
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And... as historical evidence... I point out that the cliched napkin in "napkin engineering" is canonically a cocktail napkin.
Yeah. The ideas (visionary, brilliant, good, bad, crap, impossible) flow freely after a few libations to Dionysus.
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I sure hope so, cuz otherwise my choice of "10" would be way out of line.
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Is it bad that I noticed you declared 2 is a single-precision float? (0x00000082... and no, that's not an IEEE-standard float. I'll let you figure out what I mean.)