Is there any evidence that drugs can actually help programmers produce "better" code? [closed]
- by sytycs
I just read this quote from Steve Jobs:
"Doing LSD was one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life."
Also a quote from that article:
He was hardly alone among computer scientists in his appreciation of
hallucinogenics and their capacity to liberate human thought from the
prison of the mind.
Now I'm wondering if there's any evidence to support the theory that drugs can help make a "better" programmer.
Has there ever been a study where programmers have been given drugs to see if they could produce "better" code?
Is there a well-known programming concept or piece of code which originated from people who were on drugs?
EDIT
So I did a little more research and it turns out Dennis R. Wier actually documented how he took LSD to wrap his head around a coding project:
"At one point in the project I could not
get an overall viewpoint for the operation
of the entire system. It really was too much
for my brain to keep all the subtle aspects
and processing nuances clear so I could get
a processing and design overview. After
struggling with this problem for a few
weeks, I decided to use a little acid to see if
it would enable a breakthrough, because
otherwise, I would not be able to complete
the project and be certain of a consistent
overall design"[1]
There is also an interesting article on wired about Kevin Herbet, who used LSD to solve tough technical problems and chemist Kary Mullis even said "...that LSD had helped him develop the polymerase chain reaction that helps amplify specific DNA sequences." [2]
