
The Effects of Computer Programming on the Brain (2012) - bl00djack
http://virtuecenter.com/blog/the_effects_of_computer_programming_on_the_brain.html
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jasode
This article isn't really about the " _effects of programming on the brain._ "

Instead, the author has a pre-determined value judgement of what is a "good"
or "bad" allocation of priorities. From that premise, he works backwards to a
observation that coding can be addictive. This addictiveness is then judged as
"bad":

 _> someone who may be suffering from what I can only really describe as
coding addiction, the solution may be to find healthier rewards._

For some people, the healthiest reward _is the coding_. For others, it's
working on solving a 300-year old math problem, or struggling for hours and
days to find the perfect word for a line in a poem, or a sentence in a novel.
There are no "healthier" rewards than those intellectual gymnastics.

Sometimes it's true that these "addictions" don't perfectly align with
business priorities and client demands. Saying that the addiction is
"unhealthy" is favoring the perspective of the business. The other perspective
is that the individual is in the "wrong" day job.

~~~
PopeOfNope
I wouldn't qualify this as an addiction either[0], but it's still good to know
what motivates programmer behavior and the dopamine cycle is definitely a
factor. The real question is how do we use this information in a productive
way (better code quality) rather than a destructive way (needless code
complexity).

[0]: My personal definition of addiction is, if you were to stop doing X
activity for a week cold turkey, would you experience withdrawal symptoms?

~~~
outofcuriosity
People barred from flow often experience intense anxiety; I'd imagine that the
"addicted" programmer not experiencing code flow would just replace that need
with something like a high-complexity videogame.

The author's scope is maybe too narrow by focusing only on programmers.
Perhaps this problem can be generalized to a type of individual that requires
the flow state to the extent that their other behavior is perturbed or
dysfunctional. Compare Richard Feynman's explosive rage when distracted from
calculus or drums...

~~~
goldfeld
Yeah, when I had to stop dancing--an activity that gives me a flow experience
every day--for weeks because of a twisted foot tendon, I became a mess of
anxiety, and even resorting to singing sessions wouldn't quite give me my
"fix", or fix me so to speak. Likewise, it's not about having to stop
programming, it's about, for example, having to stop working on a project in
which you have lots of daily momentum and flow. I think it's a proper
addiction. Now if it's just half-hearted programming, nobody misses it much.

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ching_wow_ka
A quote from someone who commented on the page: "When the programming addicts
on Hacker News write about programming addiction, they almost never call it
programming addiction. Usually they call it being passionate about
programming. And in their opinion, programmers who are not passionate about
programming are bad programmers."

Not saying I agree, but it could be the start of an interesting discussion.

~~~
michaelfeathers
I don't like seeing the language of addiction and recovery expanded to new
areas like this. It's a way of putting moral frame on behavior that can be
healthy and enriching.

I first felt this way when I saw "addiction" applied as a label to kids who
prefered playing video games to going outside. My response was "did they call
it addiction before video games when kids played with blocks and action
figures indoors?" They didn't. It's easy for people to reach for the term
"addiction" when they want to pathologize behavior they don't like.

Fact is, the dopamine cycle is a natural part of life. The problem isn't
whether something is addictive or not, it's whether the side effects of that
pleasure cycle are harmful. I've had periods in my life where I've spent weeks
and months at a time "heads down" in programming. It was always as
controllable as it was pleasurable.

~~~
Sirenos
Except there are legitimate health-risks to playing video games for extended
periods, which I believe is what you mean when you say "preferring video games
to the outside world". Both are odds with healthy development if allowed
without restrictions, but they are hardly equivalent in their effects on the
body.

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tilt_error
There is some interesting research made into this:

    
    
      Dietrich, A (2004) The cognitive neuroscience of creativity [1]
      Dietrich, A (2004) Neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the experience of flow [2]
    

Both of these papers are easy to read.

    
    
      [1] http://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03196731#page-1
      [2] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810004000583

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dominotw
One of the things I've noticed by being in front of the computer all the time
is that my brain never gets a chance to reminisce my past. My past is just a
blurry memory indistinguishable from a hallucination.

Internet Screens have fundamentally changed human brain.

~~~
nicklaf
This sounds like it could be quite bad for learning. I've found my learning of
an abstract subject, such as mathematics, greatly increases when I can take a
step back at each successive milestone of progress.

In contrast, when everything simply blurs together, there are no clearly
delineated chunks of memory to latch linguistic markers onto, and I fail to
build abstractions out of those thoughts.

Of course, this concern may be moot in the case of computer programming, since
the abstractions involved are often concretely represented by the computer
itself! In a way, when we program, we are outsourcing a part of our brain,
relying on a smaller subset of mental capacity, and relying on the computer to
amplify it back again, by handling the abstractions for us.

OTOH, this may simply be proof that going to the whiteboard before coding up a
solution is a healthy alternative to hacking away at the keyboard all day
without thought.

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heapcity
What is the neurological explanation for the excessive desire to find the
'optimal' algorithm, language, database ... to solve a problem rather than
just solve the problem. Do we just answer 'dopamine' to any question involving
behaviour motivation or could seratonin be at play? Anxiety about work product
solution not being as good as it could is perhaps different than 'yay it works
without an error!'

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batmoon
So the burnout I've experienced has actually been withdrawal and after 18
months off kilter I've suddenly been reminded how to remedy my malaise.

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jhrobert
Could be an interesting road for those trying to design an efficient hiring
test for software developers. AFAIK there is no such test yet.

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dang
A rather good discussion at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5790508](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5790508).

