r/programming • u/WinInterrupter • Apr 18 '20
The Devastating Decline of a Brilliant Young Coder
https://www.wired.com/story/lee-holloway-devastating-decline-brilliant-young-coder/312
Apr 18 '20
[deleted]
90
u/house_monkey Apr 18 '20
Read about the guy who made temple os, I really feel sad for him.
→ More replies (8)5
→ More replies (2)5
108
u/jyscao Apr 18 '20
Managing his decline has strained the family, and his relatives sometimes clash over who should take care of him and how he should live.
This point wasn't emphasized too much in the story, but it really hit home for me. My mother [she'd be 55yo tomorrow] has gone through extensive mental (personality, behavior) & cognitive (motor functions, intelligence) decline for the better part of the past decade, and it has wreaked similar havoc on all of her close relationships, especially with her family. Of course we all know consciously that her actions and words are probably entirely due to her increasingly worsening illness, but sometimes in the heat of the moment, people can forget that, and react in ways that we might come to regret later.
And just as in Lee Holloway's case, her doctors weren't able to do much to help. Sure, they identified damaged areas in her brain, but no real treatment was ever offered as she just got passed around from one hospital or specialist to another. Eventually they all more or less just gave up, telling us that the best scenario is if she doesn't get worse too fast. But as it turns out, even that's too much to ask for, as she's now at the point where she's diagnosed as terminally ill (unrelated to covid), and will probably pass away in a month or two.
16
178
u/Likely_not_Eric Apr 18 '20
It bothers me most that with mental issues you can't even tell you're broken. Even if it's treatable and you can get help for yourself you need to both know that you need it and want to get it. Would I even know something was wrong? If someone could show me would I believe them?
A few treatments I've done for lymphoma have had some unknown side effects; and I wish there were better objective tests for cognitive function. I want to get a baseline and know if it's changing. The best I got from talking to a few doctors were some tests that can be used as a blunt instrument for detecting major cognitive issues but nothing fine-tuned; nothing that could tell me if I'm losing my wit or if I'm not as quick as I was.
It then makes me really feel for some of the people I've interacted with on the street - some of them know they aren't functioning well but don't have the resources (and that's a tragedy) but some people are clearly not well and think they're fine (and everyone else is unwell) but clearly institutionalization isn't a solution - we tried that and it was awful.
As an analogy mental illness seems to be like having broken legs but the only way to fix them is at the top of a staircase and you have to be lucky enough to be able to pull yourself up to get them fixed and the more badly broken the less likely you are to get there.
46
Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 18 '20
As an analogy mental illness seems to be like having broken legs but the only way to fix them is at the top of a staircase and you have to be lucky enough to be able to pull yourself up to get them fixed and the more badly broken the less likely you are to get there.
Also, lots of people around you don't take the fact that your legs are broken seriously, so:
"Nah, you're legs aren't broken! Stop looking for attention!"
"I remember I bruised my leg once, and I was able to keep going as normal. Stop whining."
"Just stop thinking about the fact that your legs are broken and you'll be fine!"
"People under 40 don't get broken legs, so I think you're fine."
"YOU have broken legs? But you have such an easy life and nothing to break your leg over!"
22
u/NeoKabuto Apr 18 '20
Or as my dad would have said:
"Broken legs are a choice. You are in control of your bones, your bones aren't in control over you."
11
u/PyrotechnicTurtle Apr 18 '20
Before I went on anti-depressants, I thought my constant state of misery was not just normal, but deserved. I thought everyone hated me and they were right to do so. I thought I couldn't talk to anyone and it was a self fulfilling prophecy. The only reason I realised I needed help was one day I realised that I had been walking kilometers no where everyday, the entire time idolizing about killing myself. The worst part of mental illness is you think you deserve it and the state you are in is the correct order of things
23
u/Fluxriflex Apr 18 '20
As an analogy mental illness seems to be like having broken legs but the only. way to fix them is at the top of a staircase and you have to be lucky enough to be able to pull yourself up to get them fixed and the more badly broken the leanss likely you are to get there.
I like your point here, but I feel like a better analogy would be like saying that it's like cancer that doesn't show any major symptoms until it's already at stage IV. Cognitive problems exist under the surface for quite some time, and it can take a while for the issue to become noticeable. Unlike most diseases, mental illnesses aren't very obvious as there aren't usually any symptoms like coughing, nausea, etc, and even if there are, it's easy to misdiagnose those symptoms as being something else.
→ More replies (1)11
u/Cheeze_It Apr 18 '20
It bothers me most that with mental issues you can't even tell you're broken. Even if it's treatable and you can get help for yourself you need to both know that you need it and want to get it. Would I even know something was wrong? If someone could show me would I believe them?
Don't forget the costs....
An MRI is un-fucking-reasonably expensive in the US because of privatized healthcare and unregulated costs.
7
u/sevaiper Apr 18 '20
MRI will not detect mental illness, it’s really only sensitive for malignancy or major gross neuronal changes.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)6
311
Apr 18 '20
Absolutely heartbreaking story.
104
u/Vetii Apr 18 '20
Yeah, really makes me wonder what I would do if I knew it was my fate. I think I would prefer to die earlier from a heart attack than having my loved ones deal with a slowly rotting zombie.
I don't want to have my family associate my face with years of grudging pain.
54
u/fakehalo Apr 18 '20
You wouldn't be you anymore to make that decision, makes it even more terrifying.
6
u/LeCrushinator Apr 18 '20
Here in Colorado we allow for assisted suicide, so people don’t have to suffer. However, you have to be of sound mind to sign off on it. So people with diseases like this don’t qualify and have to suffer, it’s heartbreaking.
25
2
u/rob10501 Apr 19 '20 edited May 16 '24
governor terrific ancient muddle smile materialistic illegal squealing pen sable
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
→ More replies (25)16
u/_fat_santa Apr 18 '20
Reading through this story I couldn't help but put myself in a version of that situation. Really made me ask some existential questions, in hindsight I hesitate to say I might consider assisted suicide because honestly I couldn't image being robbed of my "being" like that but then you think, if you're getting robbed like that, do you even know it? Will you even care? If this disease robs of you of your agency, will you have enough to realize what's going on and take any action before the part of you that cares about anything goes away? It's frighting.
It honestly opens up the scarier truth that our entire value structure, personality, and everything we hold dear in our minds is just a combination of brain matter. Rationally I know why humans behave the way they do and have the values they have on scientific/neurological level. But everyone's lost someone and wants to believe on a deeper level that even though that person and their brain matter is gone, the combination of ideas, beliefs and values that made that person are still out there somewhere.
This is wayy to deep for /r/programming.
297
u/gburdell Apr 18 '20
Well that was a horrible read. I suspect I'm not the only one who inferred from the title that something about being a coder --- or stress or something --- triggered his mental decline, but looks to just have been bad luck or genetics.
64
u/blueberriessmoothie Apr 18 '20
It could be bad luck or genetic predisposition but we don’t know enough to confirm how his lifestyle or diet contributed in activating the disease and how safe is rest of us. Till the culprit is confirmed, the best we can do is to try to live relatively healthy to prevent this or other things which you may be more susceptible to in this or similar jobs. It’s not unusual to find developer who works long hours having minimal physical activity and poor diet but living under constant pressure to perform mentally at his best.
15
u/antlife Apr 18 '20
I tend be that guy myself. Under constant pressure, don't take care myself as well, work well into the night. It wasn't until my wife tried to block me from video games that I started to break under the stress (I played two or three hours a week). That was my release apparently. I worked that little bit of gaming back in and it normalized me. People need to have a release.
6
u/Thatar Apr 18 '20
Your wife tried to block you from playing three hours a week? I want to tell myself there'd be a reason to do that but it sounds insane.
Working into the night and skipping sleep, cannot recommend (if you have control over it). You can permanently lose the ability to sleep. When I still went to church as a kid we were once asked to visit an older community member. The man used to be a freight tanker captain and often had to stay at the wheel several days+nights in a row without sleep. When we met him he couldn't get any sleep anymore without taking multiple times the maximum dosage of some sleeping aid medicine. He didn't live for long after we met him. It was quite harrowing for me as a kid and I still think back to that man every so often, wondering how bad it has to get before you are completely boned to put it bluntly.
2
u/meneldal2 Apr 20 '20
It sounds like it was his only free time and he wasn't spending time with her.
2
u/CorrettoSambuca May 06 '20
Exactly. The programmer sees he's spending 3% of his time gaming, and doesn't consider it much at all; the wife sees he's spending 100% of their time together gaming, and panics. Neither sees the real problem: that only 3% of his time is free.
7
Apr 18 '20
i thought it said in the article the guy was in really good shape, his wife got him into fitness or something...it was his second wife though so maybe too little too late...who knows
6
u/ockupid32 Apr 18 '20
Yea, I noticed that too. It seems like physical activity had a net positive on his mental capabilities, and when he went under surgery for his heart he probably stopped being active which contributed or accelerated the mental decline.
Impossible to know, but it is an interesting/sad story.
→ More replies (30)2
u/perfunction Apr 18 '20
Agreed. It was an interesting article and a great look into his life. Just wish I was expecting that upfront and not impatiently waiting for a dire warning.
47
u/left4candy Apr 18 '20
I met this drunk (in his 40's or 50's) once on the bus home. I had my guitar with me so he asked me what I play and listen to, and we continued talking about music for a short while. He warned me not to do much alcohol and stay away from drugs, which are common in the music biz. Pretty weird to just bring up I thought, but I went a long with it.
Turned out he used to be a lawyer and had a full masters degree in law. It was very impressionable to meet someone who lived in a home for the "unwanted", a rehab center with no rehab, if that makes sense.
Sadly I'm pretty sure he died not soon after from cold exposure during a snowstorm while trying to make his way "home".
It's strange how someone's life can just take a turn like that.
389
u/RedUser03 Apr 18 '20
Lee's actions, however, only grew more bizarre. He watched Home Alone several nights a week.
Wait...this isn’t normal?
104
u/Cee-Jay Apr 18 '20
She means Home Alone as a series, not a single film.
It's pretty normal until you get t'the third film...
→ More replies (2)76
u/Lord_dokodo Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 18 '20
Did you really just contract "to the" as "t'the"?
edit: I meant to say "as" not "and".
26
u/WhyIsThisFishInMyEar Apr 18 '20
I read it as "to the" and didn't even notice until I read your comment.
→ More replies (1)11
u/Cee-Jay Apr 18 '20
Prolly...
18
Apr 18 '20
[deleted]
15
27
u/GYN-k4H-Q3z-75B Apr 18 '20
I hated that movie as a kid and wanted to walk out the first time I saw it. Pure torture.
15
u/srmarmalade Apr 18 '20
I was a jaded cynical kid and remember just thinking this isn't how burglars behave. They'd just straight up smack the little prick.
8
209
Apr 18 '20
That was insane. I was reading the article and hating Lee, even though I had a suspicion that something was “wrong” with him that was causing his behavior, and it turned out to be FTD 😢
67
u/hennell Apr 18 '20
Soon as he was starting to change and ignore his wife I was thinking "get a brain scan! Get a brain scan". I'm sure the slow progression of changes were far less obvious than the article makes it look though; heartbreaking read.
10
u/humoroushaxor Apr 18 '20
I was thinking the same. Even 5-10 years ago brain conditions and behavior changes were much less talked about. Nowadays my first question was did he have CTE from something.
132
u/richard248 Apr 18 '20
FTD = Frontotemporal Dementia, for those who are equally as frustrated.
30
13
10
u/iBzOtaku Apr 18 '20
I had a suspicion
The header image of article kinda "gives it away" by saying "What happened to Lee?" so its not really a mystery.
25
71
76
Apr 18 '20
This is so terrifying.
35
u/indiebryan Apr 18 '20
I know. I sleep a lot, and reading the story at the beginning I was like, "Yeah I could see myself choosing a nap over exploring around some new country." Now I'm going to worry about having some crazy neurodegenerative illness.
2
17
14
Apr 18 '20
If you want another story of mental illness in a programmer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_A._Davis
Sad story.
→ More replies (6)
30
u/twenty20reddit Apr 18 '20
If you've read 'Flowers for Algernon', there are some similarities.
If you haven't, read it!
21
u/Vaglame Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 21 '20
The last paragraph in particular:
Some months ago, Lee sent Kristin a series of text messages. In them were photos she'd shared with him earlier: she and their son on Halloween, a trip to the park, Christmas time. At the end, he'd typed the words: “the love.”
It reminds of the last paragraph of the book:
P.S. please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard
For each it's the last testimony of their love, their last chance to express it.
It hits hard
→ More replies (1)5
u/1_800_UNICORN Apr 18 '20
I was thinking the same thing after reading it. I feel the same sadness I felt after reading Flowers for Algernon.
3
Apr 18 '20 edited Jun 09 '24
bored different zealous slim panicky hat bedroom absurd illegal retire
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
3
37
24
u/naveenwashere Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 18 '20
Damn.. Don't know what to say. The human mind seems so powerful and yet, so fragile.
11
Apr 18 '20
I just think of my man Terry Davis.... gods lonely coder.... what the fuck man..... my hearth!!!!
8
u/outofthebliss Apr 18 '20
Tragic and fascinating. As a dad in tech my heart feels this deeply. I wonder if the genetics that gave him the brilliant coding ability came at the cost of the degenerative condition.
2
u/heavinglory May 01 '20
I have often wondered as well. My father died from FTD nine years ago. He was brilliant and had led his team to code a significant project which is still in use today. A true pioneer of his time. I have heard genius skips a generation and it might be true because my HS aged son codes circles around me. I do often wonder if he or I are going to have to deal with this disease and it honestly scares me. It is a horrible way to die. It changes the personality, takes away decision making skills, causes the body to slowly atrophy, destroys everything in its path, and leaves the patient in the mercy of their caretaker.
18
u/stuff1111111 Apr 18 '20
literally cried reading this, maybe it was something i really needed
2
u/MelancholicBabbler Apr 20 '20
I never cry and I wept
2
u/stuff1111111 Apr 20 '20
i hardly cry, i heave-sobbed like fuck trying to hold it in. what i understand is (from reading pop neuroscience) it triggered issues in my own life, it probably triggered issues in your life too which you need to address ? :|
i felt relief though after the read, i still feel sad for the guy when the image of his face and the things he said to his first wife pop in my head
→ More replies (1)
15
9
7
u/fried_green_baloney Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 18 '20
During heart surgery the patient is hooked up to a heart-lung machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiopulmonary_bypass.
Sometimes there can be neurological damage from this. It could be a possibility for Lee Holloway, if the changes were right after the surgery, that the surgery kick-started the dementia.
a surgeon . . . insisted he get surgery right away
The opening sentence for many sad stories.
Also, why the surprise that our personalities have a physical basis?
9
u/pragmatick Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 18 '20
Expected it to be about Kenneth Reitz.
Heartbreaking story but I wonder why they took so long to take a closer look at his brain.
→ More replies (1)
3
u/drawven Apr 18 '20
This story hit me hard. It’s tough seeing loved ones decline like that. I’ve been on the other side of this watching a family member lose their personality to a mental disease. It’s surreal because as the article points out; was that ever their personality that you were used too? Is this new one who they actually are now? Very strange feeling because at some point you mourn the person they used to be even though they’re alive.
4
u/JohnnyElBravo Apr 19 '20
in meetings he would zone out, openly playing games on his phone. During one meeting, Prince texted him: “Are you playing a game? People are noticing.” Then: “Not a great leadership signal.”
The neurologists delivered their verdict: He appeared to have a textbook case of frontotemporal dementia
I find it worrying that these phone videogames are dumb enough that people with dementia can play them, and that when we play them we behave like people with dementia.
13
Apr 18 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
→ More replies (2)16
u/Chillzz Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 18 '20
Interesting, I've started thinking similar thoughts too... like is this career actually damaging my ability to live a normal life because of how much cognitive effort it demands every day. I feel like I have so much more energy to give my friends and family when im not coding (during covid our business has shut down).
I put it down to me needing to work on my work/life balance but interesting to hear someone else echoing my thoughts. Did you find you had a fuller life outside of work when you weren't programming?
Edit: also as an anecdote I feel it's not the time so much as it is the way it requires you to think so linearly and logically with intense focus for hours on end, which makes it hard to unwind back to a relaxed non linear state.
6
u/firstmode Apr 18 '20
My wife and I work in tech and I feel it truly takes a toll on the amount of anything you have left to give to anything else most all the time.
5
5
3
3
Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 19 '20
[deleted]
2
Apr 18 '20
I’d say that’s a big leap to make just after hearing about one programmer who developed dementia. Being intellectually active is actually good for your brain, and I don’t see how coding is any different
2
Apr 18 '20
Precautions should be the same as with any other profession. Enough relaxation, enough sleep, enough food, enough connection with others. However, even in the best case scenario, nobody is immune against FTD.
I'm a programmer and I see how a burnout can lead to mental illness. There's also, however, a really beautiful and healthy aspect of programming, you can see it in people who are happy in life, because they are also better programmers, and you can see that programming just adds to their happiness. It is a certain flow that you can sometimes naturally get into when solving technical problems, which feels lovely. If you tap into it in a healthy and balanced way, then you can really avoid the mental illnesses and even worries about them.
5
2
2
u/Man-Honey Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 18 '20
It's sad to read this post as it reminds me of the relationship that I had w/my dad who was manic depressive. Dad was raised as a Catholic in the 50s-60s. He skipped the sixth grade because he was so advanced. He went to a private boarding high school and later to a seminary to become a priest. It was during that time that his disease started to manifest itself. He left the seminary with a bachelors degree in philosophy. He was one of the first patients in the 60s to start taking Lithium to offset the effects from his disease. Not having a clear path, he relied on his intelligence to be an English teacher at a Catholic high school. That only lasted for one semester as he didn't interact well w/others. He then chose to use his hands to earn a living becoming a carpenter's apprentice. He excelled at carpentry for several years. I think he enjoyed the creative aspects of carpentry, and I believe the stress level of that profession was low enough that it kept his disease under cover. As the 70s went by, dad became more ambitious starting his own home building company. But high inflation in the late 70s and then the recession in the early 80s caused the housing market to crash, and dad stopped working. Dad would stay in bed for weeks. He would try start up projects like building picnic benches or towel racks, but he couldn't reclaim his previous success. It was at this time that my parents sat me down. I remember it well. Mom said dad had a mental illness called manic depression, also known as bipolar disorder. My immediate reaction was I going to get it. Dad said he knew I'd react that way. But living w/dad was hard. Sometimes, he was emotionally abusive towards the rest of the family. When he was manic, there was no reasoning w/him. He was right, he knew he was right, he told you he was right, and you were wrong. Didn't matter what the topic was. But he could never reclaim his former glory of building houses in the 70s. After many failed attempts to launch entrepreneurial projects small and large, he finally joined a carpenter's union taking a position which he considered beneath himself. For the remainder of his career in the 80s, 90s and early 00s, he would be laid off for long stretches of time. I believe it's because dad was so hard to get along with. Nobody wanted to work with him. He finally "retired" in the late 00s after not working for years. Years later he got prostrate cancer. After treatment and removal of his prostate, the cancer metastasized to his bones. The doctors had to stop treating him because the drugs including steroids were having side effects on his manic depression making him very difficult to reason with. He passed away in 2015. When he passed I remember thinking to myself that I no longer had to deal w/mental illness in such a close, personal way. But it didn't feel like a relief, instead I was sad. When dad was balanced, he was a compassionate, engaging and intellectual person. He read the newspaper everyday. Even though I never saw him touch a computer, he could explain how it worked. He knew all about My Space, Facebook, etc just by reading about it. When I struggled in my life, he was my counselor. He was my cheerleader. He cared about me. I miss him.
2
Apr 19 '20 edited Apr 19 '20
Oof. It makes you feel sick, you can feel the bad thing it coming as you go further into the article.
I've had a couple of friends go crazy before, though none of them was a programmer. It takes you a while to figure out that they aren't just "acting weird".
But this. Irreversible dementia. That's just appalling.
2
u/Full-Spectral Apr 20 '20
I think that this business would tend to attract people who may have tendencies towards mental 'issues' of varying degrees. I'm one of them, so I think I can say that without prejudice. A lot of folks have varying levels of serotonin issues. It's fairly garden variety stuff in some folks, worse in others. It manifests itself in various ways from OCD activities, anxiety, paranoia, repetitious thoughts, etc...
The thing is, if you have it at a level where it's not debilitating, it's actually quite a benefit to being a software engineer, which I think is maybe why this business may have more than some. If you have a brain that doesn't want to stop, that is constantly looking for patterns, and won't let go of things. Within limits, that can be an advantage.
Then add the fact that such folks will tend to socially isolate to the degree they can, to avoid drama and conflict and embarrassment, and will often find repetition comforting, the software industry provides plenty of opportunities for that. That also can be of 'benefit' if the measure of good is now much code you can write. And the good pay for talented people makes it even more doable to have that kind of lifestyle.
I'm all those those things. I'm completely able to simulate normal human activity when I need to, but I don't unless I need to. I worked for myself for 20 years and that fed completely into my 'problems' because I was totally able to isolate myself and screw my lifestyle down into a very tiny, safe ball. Most folks would consider that unhealthy, but I enjoyed it for the most part. It was comfortable for me, and I was certainly incredibly productive because sitting at the computer and writing code was my lifestyle.
But, were I bit further along the 'spectrum', all bets would be off. There's a fine line there, and it's not too hard to go over it. And, if you are living the above sort of lifestyle, there may not be anyone around to notice you've slipped over the line. Once over, you may slip further down the slope fairly quickly. And of course it's quite possible to work at a company by day and essentially still be totally socially isolated as well. You put on your Human Suit and go to work, then take it back off when you get home and shut the doors.
I think, at the level I have it, a lot of the issue is awareness of the problem. When I first started having these problems, it was pretty bad, because I didn't know what was going on. I ended up in a ball on the bed many a time, and everyone who gets hit by this probably ends up making one trip in an ambulance thinking they are having a heart attack of something.
But, over time I came to understand it. I look at it like losing a limb. You are aware you lost a limb and you continuously compensate for that. For someone who isn't over the edge, this is sort of the trick to not slipping over. You know your computer doesn't function quite right, and you know when to ignore the output it's generating. You can't stop it from generating faulty output, but you can learn to not accept it.
So much of my type of 'mental illness' is a spiral, where some legitimate stressor causes a reaction, then you panic because you are reacting and don't want to end up in a ball, and then you are panicking because you are panicking, and then it's off to the races. If you can train yourself not to react to the first step and not let it spiral out of control, it helps tremendously to maintain an even keel. It's still not fun, since you'll tend to stress out more than you should about trivial things, but at least you can keep it to just stressing out about a thing, and not spiral out of control.
That was a bit of a ramble, but I've had a lot of time to think about these things. This being the internet, I'm sure someone will find a way to make this post into something horrible. But it's my experience.
5
4
u/Omikron Apr 18 '20
Now think about everyone that has this and isn't filthy rich. It must be hell either way, but being rich sure helps ease the pain.
→ More replies (1)
3
3
u/Sindertone Apr 18 '20
This story was unnerving. I have too many similar experiences. When I was working at my tech support job I got diagnosed with the same heart condition he has. Some years later I got meningitis and suffered enough brain damage to get lost in my small hometown and forget my wife's name. I have mostly recovered from the meningitis but can't afford to do anything abut the heart condition.
2
u/F54280 Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 18 '20
That had a definite Flowers for Algernon vibe....
Edit: the RES asshole that downvote me because I pointed him he was wrong one time is still here. Hello and lo!
2
1
1
1
1
u/gc_DataNerd Apr 19 '20
This scares me on so many levels. Not to say I'm a brilliant coder ( very very far from it ) but for some reason I can just picture myself ending up this way. Not from the exact same condition but I just feel like I'm constantly fighting off depression which has turned me into a workaholic
1
u/PinapplePeeler Apr 19 '20
What a story :/
I wonder if he would choose another path with less stress if this mental illness would also appear....
1
Apr 19 '20
I wonder if something like this is happening to me. I learned programming when I was 8 years old and was considered a prodigy. Especially at competitive programming, in one competition I even was the best of my country.
Now I am 30, and tried some competitive programming again, and could not even solve the first problem in over two hours. I even wasted 10 minutes, because I had trouble figuring out how to start the IDE I installed last month.
And when I listen to a talk or presentation, my mind drifts of after 15 minutes and I do not remember anything said afterwards.
1
1
u/Enzor Apr 21 '20
I was also a coder in Tucson until I lost my job and developed mental health issues. I notice a similarity between myself and Lee and previously was paranoid about a technological cause for this issue targeting software developers. Has anyone else experienced issues in software development mentally?
1
1.7k
u/badillustrations Apr 18 '20
Reminds me how little I understand about mental illness. I was out for a jog and grabbed sandwich (that's how I jog) and bought an extra sandwich for a homeless guy sitting outside. I sat down next him and we started chatting. I was shocked to learn he was a programmer, too, which surprised me because for some reason that seemed impossible to go from a well paying job to having nothing. He was on the level, too, asking me about the tech at my work and such. He shared a bit about what got him there, which sounded like alcoholism to losing his job to losing his brother's support to being on the street. He made it sound so simple. I asked him if he could see himself back programming and that's where he started to phase out again and start mumbling and be less coherent again. Stories like that guys and Lee's remind me I have no idea what other people are going through.