neurohack

This has been majorly pissing me off ever since I switched from Firefox. There's no way to turn it off in Chromium's settings - apparently this is by design. Thank the gods for open source software. The relevant file is chrome/browser/download/download_extensions.cc. This contains a list of "dangerous" file extensions; if the extension of the file you're downloading matches, you get that annoying confirmation dialog. Find the function and replace the body of the function with Build and we're done. For the lazy, here's a patch:

Wake up with an overpowering urge to become some kind of macabre pavement decoration. Go outside, smoke a cigarette. Smoke another one. Write code. Feel better.

I do this every so often. My psychiatrist calls it schizoaffective disorder. My friends call it 'batshit insane'.

During my time as a developer for OrionVM, Mike Casey from GradConnection suggested I write an article on mental illness in startups. I wrote a blog post instead; a few thoughts and observations after a year in the startup community.

Work helps. Really. It's just that little bit harder to feel completely worthless when you can point to an awesome product and say "I helped build this".

I work better in a startup environment than I have in any other. I dropped out of high school at fifteen, tried and failed to find and keep a 'normal job', went back to high school, dropped out again, somehow got into university and dropped out of that too. For the last year I've been coding for startups, and for the first time in my life I can honestly say that I'm a moderately-stable, mostly-functional member of society. I don't think this is a coincidence.

Startups are flexible. Use that to your advantage. I can't work 9-5. I know a lot of other people who can't work 9-5. I've tried, hard, but sometimes my brain just doesn't co-operate. There are times when I'm too depressed to get out of bed. There are times when the thought of being around people is so painful that even close friends can't come near me. There are times when I'm a functional, collected, professional software engineer. In a startup, as long as you deliver, no one cares.

You will be non-functional some of the time. There are people who think that depression means 'feeling low', and that if you try hard enough, you can 'snap out of it'. These people are idiots. It's not a matter of being strong enough or dedicated enough. For me, like most people with depressive illnesses, there will be times when I just plain can't. In my worst states I can barely remember what a for loop does, let alone code one. Accept that there will be times when you can't work, and make the most of the times when you can.

That said, if I can write code, I find that work is sometimes one of the most effective ways to stop the depression from worsening. When the self-hatred gets bad enough that I can't stand the thought of being around people, I can still build something useful. Schizoaffective programmer Michael Crawford says "I can work effectively even when I'm wigging, even when I'm hallucinating, even when I'm severely depressed." He later expanded on this:

And by wigging, I meant that I could develop software while severely paranoid. I've spent a lot of productive hours at the office, laboring at my computer, while trying to avoid thinking of the fact that a Nazi armoured division was holding maneuvers in the parking lot.

I'd like to hear some other hackers' thoughts on how startups mix with depressive disorders. Opinions?

main(){printf("Hello, world.\n");}