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Comment by cubano | Hacker News Reader

I'm 50yo and am still learning new shit everyday...just a month ago I bit the bullet and learned enough javasc...excuse me ECMAScript, to be pretty damn dangerous :)

Over the past weekend I learned docker and am now running containers all over the place...these aren't trivial things and the speed of which I'm picking stuff up is as fast, if not faster, then it has ever been for me.

The point is I am 10 years older then the age this study targeted, and I find it humorous that they are telling me I am AT LEAST 25 IQ points dumber because I work 50-60 hour weeks.

Plus, where do I tick the box about my lifetime of pretty hardcore drug use and its supposed effects on my IQ?

Now I do get tired...physically tired...from the efforts required to keep up but besides that, my anecdotal experience goes against this research.

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> my anecdotal experience goes against this research

There are several things wrong with your argument.

Even if we ignore the fact that you aren't talking about your IQ, the fact that you learned docker or JS despite working doesn't even go against the study: you need to compare your speed of learning after working vs while not working. Knowing only how fast you can learn after working full time isn't enough to draw a conclusion after all..

Also, it's debatable how difficult it is in terms of raw intelligence to learn JS and Docker. It could be argued that using new tools is more constrained by knowledge than by intellectual ability, and this is especially the case if you've learned similar things before, like another imperative language.

    > I find it humorous that they are telling me I am
    > AT LEAST 25 IQ points dumber

They are not telling "you". Statistics != "everybody". No idea why you feel personally insulted. I heard x % of people are sociopaths (or insert something else bad here) - should I now complain "hey, I'm not a sociopath (or whatever)"?

Yep, I'm just like you. About to turn 60, been a daily hardcore drug user for most of my life, and I've been picking up new languages and technologies every day, all while working 60 hours a week.

I find it quite hurmorous indeed that there are those that would suggest that we are not intellectually capable.

Glad to know there is someone else like me out there. :)

What class of drugs? If you don't mind.

Just registered this account to discuss. This is something I worry about, I am a 31 year old dev, only learned to code 5 years ago. I smoke around 28 grams of strong cannabis (kush and haze) a week. Between the ages of 17-25 every weekend consisted either cocaine, ecstasy, mdma, ketamine or whatever really. I currently feel as although I'm playing with as much tech as ever I can't hold as much state in my head when developing and resort to the debugger a lot more. My cannabis intake has gone up in the past year probably. You think its the bud?

Cannabis and programming only seem to mix for me when I'm using lightly ( less than a few times a week )

When I moved to Colorado my intake skyrocketed. Was up to around 7 grams a week (16-25%thc) with 90% concentrates mixed in for fun. I was able to work with 0 problems for a few months but started noticing subtle fogginess over the course of my days and like you, holding state was difficult ( along with general debugging slowness )

Naturally I figured it would be wise to slow down consumption and went on a tolerance break. Within a few days I was back to 100% and now only smoke a few times a week. Currently I notice no negative day to day issues and all mental fogginess is gone! I like to sit down after work, toke, and then code.. so happy to report my anecdotal data as positive!

This goes for other drugs too, even "normal" ones like caffeine. I had a nasty habit of drinking a ridiculous amount of coffee and noticed very similar issues as above with cannabis. And like above, cutting the caffeine down was the fix for me.

Take a break for a few weeks ( or at least cut back significantly ) and see how you feel. Smoking that much weekly is only necessary with an extreme tolerance anyway.

Good luck and hope you feel better!

I'm also 31 and have been smoking almost as long as I've been coding - since I was 15. An oz per week is pretty heavy smoking - if you can cut that down to at most a 1/4 per week and exercise every day, I think you would see a drastic improvement in your cognitive ability when programming. I've found that intense interval type exercise helps with negative side effects of smoking, especially if you do it in the morning and save the smoking for after work.

Plus, smoking after programming all day helps you shift perspective and think differently about any roadblocks you're stuck on. Best of luck.

Does your anecdotal experience go against this research? Have you tried working fewer hours a week and noticed that you don't have an easier time learning things?

Go ahead and flip the framing to the other side if you feel offended, working less will give you 25 "extra" IQ points from your norm.

"These aren't trivial things..." Those are pretty trivial things, I mean JS is some people's first language. You can LEARN docker in couple days or less. Please correct me If I am wrong ?

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