As someone with diagnosed ADHD (and finally on medication), I cannot emphasize enough, how much this view/attitude hurts those who probably have ADHD but are influenced by this attitude (including myself, as I now finally get my shit together in a relatively consistent way without being distracted by literally everything, after being unmedicated for 20 years…).
I even know a few who very likely have ADHD that share this view and don’t want to take medication.
Fine, everyone should obviously decide for themselves if they want to take medication (or any other drugs at that), but please don’t spread this attitude, it harms those who probably have ADHD but don’t get diagnosed and just think “that’s (my behavior) probably normal”.
Also it’s not just “being productive” in a capitalist system, but rather to get your life together (not forgetting important stuff, executive dysfunction etc. i.e. function better in society (impulsive behavior can be a problem sometimes)).
The shortage AFAIK is pretty artificial and caused by the DEA. So I would rather “shit” on the failed War on Drugs than on those who self-diagnose on ADHD and take/“abuse” medication. Drug abuse is a different topic and omnipresent and a social blurred sense of reality with hard drugs like alcohol (it’s actually a harder drug than stimulants like Adderall…).
IMHO everyone should decide themselves what they take if it doesn’t harm others…
Non the less, if one suspects they have ADHD they should obviously talk to a (good) doctor to verify and check side-effects, probably different medication (for me e.g. Atomoxetine works better for executive dysfunction, and stimulants are good to keep the focus on one topic, while not being distracted (but doesn’t fix executive dysfunction that well)).
Yeah, I agree with most not so interesting code (which is surprisingly much, if I think about it, especially average frontend/backend apps, client side oriented boilerplaty code (say e.g. React UI…)).
But coding a nice smart architecture, something novel/innovative (I think where the art of software engineering really lies IMHO)… well I’m not even thinking anymore about using AI (for now at least), it just confuses me, writes dumb code, and writing back and forth with it is cumbersome (to get better code), so that I just code it myself (being a fast typer is reallly helpful I think…). (I’m using it often though as some kind of StackOverflow replacement, but letting the AI code…? nah).
I think it’ll likely take a few years still where I really seriously can/have to think about using AI productively in these cases (where it may even teach me a few things about language features I haven’t known yet)…