For me, "better" code seems to come from a combination of confidence, creativity, and concentration (maybe not all at the same time).
I need a certain amount of confidence to go after a difficult chunk of work that may not really lead anywhere or may turn out to be too big a task to accomplish in the available time.
I need a certain amount of creativity to come up with new avenues to try when I'm stuck on a problem or starting to brainstorm a new project.
And I need a certain amount of concentration to power through a hard coding task (both to tune out distractions and to keep a lot of information in short-term memory).
I have zero experience with hallucinogens, but my understanding is that they can help immensely with creativity but are really lousy for concentration (anyone care to chime in?).
Straight depressants don't really help me with any of the above, although I gather some people get more confident after drinking. I tend to go straight from "pleasantly unwound" to "I really need to get to sleep".
My experience with (legally prescribed) stimulants is that they're really pretty great for confidence and concentration. I also find that being slightly behind on sleep is less of an impediment to coding, and when I get into social settings I'm much more engaged and generally better at interacting with people.
The flip side is that I often can't sleep well, and I can rarely nap, so if I get too far behind I end up clicking around the web like a zombie all day. Paradoxically I'm a lot less interested in socializing, even while I'm better at it. All told I would say it's neutral to negative on creativity.
I'm also not totally comfortable with what effect five, ten, or twenty years of daily use will have, and part of me really wants to maximize the portion of my life spent without taking a pill every day. So it's a mixed bag.
I need a certain amount of confidence to go after a difficult chunk of work that may not really lead anywhere or may turn out to be too big a task to accomplish in the available time.
I need a certain amount of creativity to come up with new avenues to try when I'm stuck on a problem or starting to brainstorm a new project.
And I need a certain amount of concentration to power through a hard coding task (both to tune out distractions and to keep a lot of information in short-term memory).
I have zero experience with hallucinogens, but my understanding is that they can help immensely with creativity but are really lousy for concentration (anyone care to chime in?).
Straight depressants don't really help me with any of the above, although I gather some people get more confident after drinking. I tend to go straight from "pleasantly unwound" to "I really need to get to sleep".
My experience with (legally prescribed) stimulants is that they're really pretty great for confidence and concentration. I also find that being slightly behind on sleep is less of an impediment to coding, and when I get into social settings I'm much more engaged and generally better at interacting with people.
The flip side is that I often can't sleep well, and I can rarely nap, so if I get too far behind I end up clicking around the web like a zombie all day. Paradoxically I'm a lot less interested in socializing, even while I'm better at it. All told I would say it's neutral to negative on creativity.
I'm also not totally comfortable with what effect five, ten, or twenty years of daily use will have, and part of me really wants to maximize the portion of my life spent without taking a pill every day. So it's a mixed bag.