I have never known anyone I have worked with to do drugs (in order to aid work). Doesn't mean they don't, but I hadn't even thought about it until I read this post. One of the first things I learned in my (albeit young) career is that my brilliant, complex, I-worked-all-night-to-make-this super code is total garbage that no one wants to work with. Yes, it's amazing, but if no one else can understand it or wants to, it's dead in the water.
Making code simpler is more important, being reliable and sustaining a constantly improving level of code quality is pure gold. This will allow my team to be more productive, we will get better quality products out faster and be able to build upon them. I think my natural mind is best suited for the complex demands required by collaborating with others, thinking deeply, and turning thoughts into clear, clean, testable and tested code.
Far from wanting to stimulate myself to work more, I'd love to be able to turn my mind off and relax more quickly, and get a good nights sleep to start again refreshed. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of coders had a little alcohol in the evenings, maybe marijuana. The coders I know drink a little (not too much) and one of them smokes weed. That's it.
I agree with other comments that I think people self-select into different groups. There are people that take drugs. They hang out with people that take drugs. Maybe some of them have gotten into coding. There are a lot of people who don't take drugs, and they usually work with similar people. I don't think this is a coding vs non-coding thing, but maybe what type of person you turned out to be in high school. I'd bet most coders aren't the drug-taking type.
I've also been at three different startups in the Bay Area (two in SF) and have never had any drug use going on around me or personally at work. Just the daily coffee/tea and the occasional beer during the end of the day.
NO one I know uses Adderall to get through the day although I know a few that have taken it during finals week and or studying for job interviews, and a decent number (maybe like 10-15% of my friend group) had a year or so with frequent marijuana use but stopped for various reasons.
Making code simpler is more important, being reliable and sustaining a constantly improving level of code quality is pure gold. This will allow my team to be more productive, we will get better quality products out faster and be able to build upon them. I think my natural mind is best suited for the complex demands required by collaborating with others, thinking deeply, and turning thoughts into clear, clean, testable and tested code.
Far from wanting to stimulate myself to work more, I'd love to be able to turn my mind off and relax more quickly, and get a good nights sleep to start again refreshed. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of coders had a little alcohol in the evenings, maybe marijuana. The coders I know drink a little (not too much) and one of them smokes weed. That's it.
I agree with other comments that I think people self-select into different groups. There are people that take drugs. They hang out with people that take drugs. Maybe some of them have gotten into coding. There are a lot of people who don't take drugs, and they usually work with similar people. I don't think this is a coding vs non-coding thing, but maybe what type of person you turned out to be in high school. I'd bet most coders aren't the drug-taking type.