ProgrammerHumor
stillBetterThanARaceConditionIGuess
Discussion
Too real. ADHD meds don't magically fix executive function they just make you hyper-focused on the wrong thread instead of scattered across all of them.
Yes but personally I still prefer that. Maybe I'm not getting the right thing done but at least I'm getting something done
At least there's a chance something gets done.
Still better than being unmedicated
Exactly! Lifes better when you can wake up and do amphetamine
And when it kicks too hard just smoke some weed additionally. š
That's why I learned it is so important to start your work while they kick in. Otherwise its pet project/ porn addiction whole day long...
Well you can kind of choose which thread you want to follow by trying to get into things before the vyvanse hits you,
Can't say i agree with that. It allows me to at least focus on actually doing my job (which I struggled with after i moved to full home office during/after covid. I started taking my meds again and can most of the time hyperfocus on work
Being married to someone medicated for ADHD is fun because she will start cleaning the closet at 11PM on a work night.
I found different meds do it differently, vyvanse basically just locked my brain on whatever I was doing when it kicked in, while Dex gave more control over what I focused on but didnt help with the executive function as much.
Thatās when you are in āundocumented featureā territory. You never know how you got there, and sometimes donāt know how to leave. And youāre still there at 4am in bed
As a Software Engineer and someone with ADD, this shit happens wayyyy to often. Soul reason as to why I have to tell everyone to stop pinging me directly about every small and insignificant question/problem.
Soul reason as to why I have to tell everyone...
I believe the normal phrase would be "sole", but I feel this enough that I am just going to upvote with this minor footnote.Ā It usually feels like a "soul reason", I hear you...lol.
It's actually better if they interrupt you, now you get extra repetition.
What you really have to do is mark down a few important points in your thinking process, and you'll be right back to where you were.
More or less except it never stays on the same topic. Like youād think Iām in a blackhole about the existential necessity of the c==ā,ā statement, but nah Iām in a blackhole of tangents and now thinking about the nature of language and the origin of the ācā sound.
I probably figured out the original problem somewhere in the tangents, but now itās too late. I kept taking tangents, it got overwritten in my short term memory, and now itās lost forever. At least until the blackhole of tangents somehow leads me back to that specific tangent lol
Some people say that ācā doesnāt really have a definitive sound thoughāis it just a quantum superposition of ākā and āsā?
is it just a quantum superposition of ākā and āsā?
and ts
Depends on language.
Yeah, in many languages it is either k or s or in Turkic languages it is j.
To me that's more what extreme focus looks like, until interrupted.
A little bit. But you don't need help to get distracted, you do it on your own like a professionalTM
That's extreme focus and flow destroyed by events in the outside world.
With ADHD you don't need anybody to distract you, it happens the whole time on its own.
Only sometimes
that's just average programming experience nothing adhd about that.
Damn if this ain't the truth.
i really need to get diagnosed
If you feel like you might have it, I can only recommend it.
Under this administration? I don't need to be put on a list.
I have it, and quite badly š never been diagnosed.
It really fucks with my life, but some how I function well enough, I'm scared to try meds
I'm on the same boat. I have done well with building coping mechanisms like writing,g taking lots of notes, and using apps like Todoist. But I'm scared of using meds and having the meds fuck me up even more.
The meds have been such a game changer for me. It basically removed 95% of my anxiety. For the first time I could do work when I wanted, not only when overwhelming pressure allowed me to focus before medication. And that was from day 1. It also improved my relationship as I'm much more calm and able to context switch after being interrupted.
And I had to report in with my psych on how it was going.
What scares you about them?
I have friends who say the side effects for them were hectic and had bad consequences.
I'm scared I like the meds a lot, and keep using them despite the benefits not outweighing the side effects.
It might be an irrational fear, but yea I have it
sounds like a bug's life
Pixar in 1998:
Say that again
For me, it more like this...
Unmedicated:
Hello from thread 1 of 4. You have gained 1 bonus thread.
Hello from thread 5 of 5. I cleared the other threads for you to make room for the threads I would like to spin off.
Medicated:
Hello from thread 1 of 4.
Hello from thread 3 of 4.
Hello from thread 2 of 4.
Hello from thread 4 of 4.
Hey it's your bonus thread again, I am g-- // SIGKILL from thread 1, it wants to finish first
// 30 min later
Hello from thread 1 of 4 - now lets REALLY focus on how to build the best Balatro deck
Funny how its exactly 30 minutes eh? I could use it as a cooking timer.
I feel like unmedicated adhd should have more threads racing
To be fair it had to fit on a phone screen
To anyone experiencing this - according to what friends have said about their experiences dealing with this, you may not be on the right medication if you're feeling bogged down and you might wanna try others. Best of luck.
This post reduced the efficacy of my Adderall
dont forget the lock that is being held by one of the threads that has just gone to sleep, so nothing is happening.
or that your stack space (short term memory) is less than half the size of normal for some reason.
I get the threading part but can someone explain the adhd part of the joke?
The ADHD joke is the race condition on line 2.
Having ADHD often means random thoughts just invade and throw things off, disrupting your rhythm unless you apply significant effort and mindfulness to stay on track.
Itās a lot like a race condition in an asynchronous system: unexpected inputs disrupt the flow, and if you're not careful, the whole thing breaks down.
Iād also argue itās not like multithreading, where multiple processes run in parallel. The human brain just doesnāt work that way. Itās more like a single-threaded asynchronous system with constant context switching
Is JavaScript the ultimate ADHD programming language then?
Badly written Javascript is
Oh shit
I's also say ADHD brain is more like a stack (with sometimes randomly discarding frames in between) while it should be a queue.
Multithreading (and all processing unless the total number of threads running on the whole machine is equal to or below the number of cores) does use context switching, but yes.
As for the allegory, I'd add that randomly some thread(s) will get its priority bumped way up and it'll prevent important system processes like "eating" and "sleeping" from happening on time.
Multithreading (and all processing unless the total number of threads running on the whole machine is equal to or below the number of cores) does use context switching,
What?
Context switching is happening all the time on computers with run an operating system. Even if only one use-land process would run. You need to switch from and to the kernel.
But there is nothing like a normal computer which runs only one user-land task. Also the kernel runs usually multi-threaded.
Also even if you had only exactly as much thread + processes as (v)CPU cores (there is also HW backed hyper-threading) you would have constant context switches as processes or threads aren't usually pined to a core. If you want that, this needs extra setup.
The total number of threads includes all system threads, yes. The only case where this wouldn't happen is if your "computer" would be a very simple chip with no OS or user/kernel space or any of that complexity and abstraction.
You're lucky the meds work on you, am autistic with add, none them meds do shit for me, conserta, Ritalin, you name it, I've probably tried it :(
Feels bad man
Concerta and Ritalin are the exact same thing, namely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylphenidate
They were the only ones that came to mind at the time haha, recently I've tried this one called lyberdia, it's a lisdexafetamine like Vyvanse and others, it's like the third brand I try, hope I can find a good solution soon.
Speaking from a similar experience, sometimes these medications change effectiveness from childhood to adulthood. So if you tried something as a kid/teenager, it may work better as an adult. I am pretty sure it is something to do with puberty and having more hormone stability.
For me, It also helps that #1 as an adult I actually wanted to take the medicine, whereas as a kid I hated it and would often lie about taking it, and #2 I have also developed habits that work for me to remember to take the medicine. (Alarms, calendar reminders, and a satisfying checkbox system)
Oh I'll talk to my psychiatrist about it, thank you for pointing that out!
Dextroamf worked wonders for me
If you don't mind me asking, how did it help? Are you able to focus on whichever topic you want to focus on?
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it also makes me kinda addicted to the current task im doing. It is very hard for me to stop working on my projects. And if im not working on it im usually thinking on what i want to do next on my project.
That's what Speed does to anybody.
It's called Speed for a reason. It makes you want to go on and on and onā¦
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me_irl
But at least you're able to push the button that starts the program.
Could be an overdose. When i have a dose too high i either hyperfocus on one thing or cant even focus on one thing.
The perfect dose for me lowers the threadcount from 24 to 4.
And kind of buffs my ram.
Without meds its like my gpu is running out of vram
That's so damn sad
Well.... aderall with a fastpaced job I'm passionate about might have single thread days. But others? More threads more fun.
I take the retarded version (Medikinet) and it works in 2 stages...4 hours, then a short drop off and then 4 more hours. THe first 4 hours make very motivated to work on stuff but also a bit too "over the top" and sometimes it increases the hyperactivity for a bit. The dropoff SUCKS, I get depressed for like 30 minutes and then the second, much much milder phase begins where I get calm and concentrated and can really work on stuff.
I'm in this image and I don't like it.
Iām in this picture and I donāt like it.
Maybe, but the timeout is set to 16 hours instead of 45 seconds
lol so accurate! My brain feels like it's trying to process 404 threads at once, not found šš #ProgrammerLife
least obvious bot account
Unfortunately not. See this case for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1k8b2hj/meta_unauthorized_experiment_on_cmv_involving/
For me it's more like "Hello from Thread 19 out of 4"
I had a brief internship at my town hall IT department, I got to see them reinstalling the government software they use for handling people's personal data.
I kid you not, the manual for fixing its issues hundreds of pages long, with half of the pages being custom made by the people in the IT department and their predecessors.
When installing it, it just went progress 4/15... 8/15.... 16/15
Hey, they learned from windows! Such fun times.
I hear from thread 18 ever six months or so