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Comment by nhangen | Hacker News Reader

Man, had to stop after the cigarette comment and ask -

What is it with people in SF smoking? When I visited I felt like I spent my entire day walking through a cloud of smoke. So odd for me to see programmers that smoke. Just can't reconcile it. (back to the article).

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As a developer who smokes, there are a couple aspects I've discovered that I think make the habit more popular with developers.

Obviously, the short-run benefits of smoking are far outweighed by the long and medium run detrimental effects, and this isn't an argument in favor of people smoking.

1) nicotine is a cognitive enhancer, giving short term improvements in attention and memory.

This has pretty clear benefits for programming. See sources/citations at end of comment for more information.

2) The nicotine addiction withdrawal cycle of leaving the building to smoke every x hours provides a relatively scheduled context shift. I've found this to have similar effects(albeit more mild) effects to timer based productivity techniques with timed periods of focused effort followed by breaks. I frequently have 'aha' moments in the elevator on the way down to smoke from my office after being stuck on a particular problem or bug coding.

See: NIH 1992 - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1579636 " Abstract 1. Nicotine improves attention in a wide variety of tasks in healthy volunteers. 2. Nicotine improves immediate and longer term memory in healthy volunteers. 3. Nicotine improves attention in patients with probable Alzheimer's Disease. 4. While some of the memory effects of nicotine may be due to enhanced attention, others seem to be the result of improved consolidation as shown by post-trial dosing."

Cognitive Effects of Nicotine Amir H. Rezvani and Edward D. Levin (2001) http://directory.umm.ac.id/Data%20Elmu/jurnal/B/Biological%2...

Interesting... there is a an accessible meta-analysis here - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3151730/

There is some evidence that achieving cognitive benefit is related to genetic variants that promote nicotine dependence - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20886544

Ever thought about just chewing gum or using an inhaler?

I also hear that since smoking is now taboo and smokers now gather outside in well-defined areas, smoking is a great networking opportunity. You end up talking to people you'd never talk to otherwise, with the built in opener of bumming a cigarette or asking for a light.

Why not just chew nicotine gum and abate the possibility of cancer.

Nicotine gum is addictive too, with its own set of problems.

I know, but it's not nearly as bad as tobacco and smoking imho.

If your goal was to reduce the risk of cancer, but you wanted to enjoy nicotine, that would probably be a reasonable thing to do.

I can only speak for myself, but I find smoking is much more enjoyable than chewing nicotine gum. There are probably lovely tasting brands of nicotine gum but I've tried about three or four and they have all shared a strange characteristic... it's like a feeling that they are chemically burning the inside of your mouth slightly, and for me the feeling intensifies the longer I chew the gum for. Of course when smoking there's lots of nasty effects too, but I'm just saying given the choice I'd take smoking.

Source: non smoker who has tried to give up lots of times

Data does not support your anecdote. SF has the 9th lowest smoking rate in the country according to one study [1]. California in general has the 2nd lowest smoking rates after Utah, which is impressive considering how big California is.

[1] http://healthyliving.blog.ocregister.com/2010/06/18/what-cit...

Of course it's my personal experience, but I feel it's more acceptable to be a smoker in NYC than SF.

I didn't notice this about SF, at least compared to Britain. Perhaps on Market St, but then generally they weren't smoking tobacco... :-/

Not sure why you got downvoted. I rarely see people smoking in SF especially compared to other cities I've visited (Paris, London, Hong Kong)

Americans, I think, just generally smoke less than people elsewhere in the world.

I can give an anecdote that supports this with Doctors. I worked in a cancer research group and the docs would always make comments about how many doctors smoked when they went to conferences out of the country.

I have to do something with my hands when I'm thinking and not typing. I don't smoke, but I do have this unconscious need that arises during this time. My negative reaction is to get really hungry (even though I don't need food), I've been trying to change that to a video game "break" while I'm pursuing some mental gymnastics (which is working fairly well).

So I could see how smoking easily would fit into that unconscious need. In fact, most of the people I have daily interactions with smoke. I'm in the process of removing myself from the situation (of having to deal with smoke clouds 5 feet from my computer).

* I have nothing personally against smokers, the smoke clouds (3+ people) just disrupt my mental processes.

I have the opposite anecdote. I was talking to someone who was smoking a few weeks ago, and I could not recall the previous time when I had even seen someone smoking. I have never seen a place where so few people smoke!

A lot of neuroscience research has pointed to the fact that people often don't make decisions entirely rationally or consciously. This applies to highly logical people as well.

I quit smoking after I wrote my master's thesis in 2007, but the scenario described certainly describes a conscious decision.

I'm more impressed by the number of tech nerds and investors that go completely balls out at Burning Man. It must be like 20% of YC companies represented.

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