from Hacker News

Drink for Better Coding: The Ballmer Peak Is Real, Study Says (2012)

by supersan on 10/20/16, 9:35 PM with 5 comments

• by soreal on 10/20/16, 10:24 PM

  If this is true, I suspect (anecdotally) that it is only true for solving small problems that don't require serious thought, patience or diligence.

  In that experiment, the problems required 10-15 seconds of thought to solve.

  Programming well can take 10-15 minutes just to rebuild a fresh mental model of the system you're working on.

  It even mentions that drinking boosts creativity but not working memory. Coding is far more dependent on working memory than creativity.

• by eukaryote on 10/21/16, 9:10 AM

  A few years ago, I had a player in my tennis team who had a small beer before playing matches.

• by Senji on 10/20/16, 10:49 PM

  It's also real for Arcade games and fighting games.

• by tranv94 on 10/21/16, 12:33 AM

  cc: Human Resources