I have been working in the IT industry for the last 13 years and I was diagnosed with ADHD around two years back.
As part of my job, I have to look at a lot of code. It used to be that I used to write a lot of it, but recently since getting promoted, my work now revolves mostly around reviewing the code others wrote or sometimes enhancing someone else’s code.
The problem comes when I come across some extremely convoluted legacy code. For example, like a function hierarchy with 10+ levels of function calls across several hundreds of lines. This causes me some problems understanding what’s going on because it’s nearly impossible for me to follow every branch to understand which part of the code needs fixing. After a while traversing the function calls I often forget how I got there and have to retrace my steps (I use debug breakpoints but it doesn’t help much). I also tend to get distracted with ideas of how to re-implement the whole thing with best practices rather than focus and work on delivering the fix that I am expected to do. This severely hampers my turnaround time and I’m sure my supervisors are frustrated.
What baffles me, however, is that my other colleagues look like they have no problems working on this codebase. So I cannot really blame the badly written code before my supervisors.
So I just wanted to ask anyone here who has ADHD, works in IT/Software Engineering how do you cope with a situation like this? Also, does medication help here?
I used to be on Atomoxetine, but after experiencing a nasty anxiety attack, I stopped about a month ago. Not that I observed any major improvements while I was on it.
PS: Apologies if the context does not make sense to any of you non-IT folks. I can clarify if you ask.
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Dev with 18-20 years of experience. I was originally diagnosed in the 90s. Stopped taking meds (Atomoxetine) recently because I hated how they altered my mood.
It’s not just you. Your colleagues probably have the same struggle but it just hasn’t been talked about yet. Any time I’ve brought up a gripe about something, I’ve always had colleagues chime in and agree. Any time I have to traverse complex code like that, I have to have like 5 panes open in VSCode and sometimes I have to take rough notes, or diagram it out.
I don’t work in software, but networking, where I often have to work in CLI for configurations on multiple devices simultaneously. What I’ve been taught, and what’s worked for me, is drawing logical diagrams by hand with pen and paper when I’m working in a system that I think has the complexity level to get lost in. I don’t know for sure how well that will translate to software in general unfortunately.
Where that line is varies person to person, so you might only do it for those weird legacy systems. That’s usually how it is for me. This is how I best understand things in general. Laying them out physically in front of me and writing it all by hand in the format that I Intuit really helps me keep track of exactly where I’m working on what
I tried doing that, except instead of drawing diagrams of the flow of execution, I write down a gist of what I understood after reading a couple of lines. It’s still pretty hard to do because interpreting what something does is hindered by things like function or variable names often don’t always align with their actual purpose or even not adequately descriptive either. I often find myself muttering “Why the fuck is this written this way.”
I guess legacy code is the bane of everyone with ADHD.
I personally doubt many people are good at this, ADHD or not. Anyway, logging is the best way for me to “see” what’s going on. If you can output the name of the functions when they are called, you can see the order of what’s happening. Then, hone in on certain areas and add more landmark output statements to show major steps and intermediate results until you locate the problem.
Meds can help the focus required to stick with this tedious process. Logging is a great tool, and even better if you take the time to make it configurable.
I avoid adding logs because after I’m done, I will have to remove them otherwise my PRs will be very big depending on how many files I have to update. I instead track the call hierarchy of the function I am studying using a feature in the IDE. It basically creates a tree of all functions called by a function, which helps me track how deep I am and how I got to where I am currently.
I should probably resume my medication though.
That’s cool, is it visual studio? I guess it depends on the system, but if you have good log files, you or anyone can troubleshoot problems without even looking at the code.
No, IntelliJ IDEA. I do add a lot of logs in my own code though.
Skim the book, “working effectively with legacy code”. In a nutshell, you write characterization tests around the module or method, then do safe IDE based refactorings, then do some slightly more significant refactorings. After that the code should make enough sense for you to make changes if you need to.
It is as much in art as a science. The important thing is that as you are doing refactorings, the main one you do is to extract methods, and give the methods clear names that say what they are doing. You should be left with a top-level method that reads like a narrative of what the whole thing does.
Medication helps me quite a bit. I am also using Atomoxetine. The effect is much more subtle than stimulants, but I think just as powerful in the long run.
Ironically these types of tickets are kinda my ADD superpower. I hyperfocus on understanding the entire flow until I fully understand every possible way the bug could occur, then fix it.
It’s when I’m trying to plan something from the ground up that the writer’s block hits me and I fall into procrastination and infinite rabbit holes till pressure is applied externally.
For me, I’ll hop onto a new git branch and start renaming functions and variables to what they actually do.
I might drag some blocks of code out into new functions, just a real rough refactor to get both the flow and my understanding of each block in place.
Big if conditions get their own function, named what the intent is.
I work in Xcode, so we can add extra context to breakpoints. I recently discovered the bookmarks that are built in, and you can annotate them too!
Make a change, start from the top and make sure it reads ok and still makes sense.
It’s eating an elephant on repeat.
Yeah, I use bookmarks and mnemonic bookmarks as well.
Creating a rough git branch is a good idea though, I should do that. Currently, I try not to modify the code too much when studying so that the code because I would later have to revert them back otherwise it would confuse the PR reviewers if there are too many formatting changes not relevant to required changes.
This is such a good idea, thanks for sharing!
Others have covered this well. From my experience (35 years), most “developers” write stream of thought code. It reflects how their brains process, without regard to others. When I have agency, I can steadily refactor the code to reduce indirection, nested if.then, etc. When I don’t, I’m in danger of being too slow in completing the work. Just lost my job for that reason while working with a 1000 line service entry method with a cyclomatic complexity of 310 and 34 class parameters. Coupled with being the acceptance tester as well, it makes it near impossible to succeed.
For extremely complicated code I used to create simple diagram sketches that illustrated the dependencies. It acted as a series of bookmarks to help keep my place. I think I have a smaller “working space” in my mind than non ADHD programmers. I think they can keep all that complexity in their mind at once while I cannot.
In a way, I turn that into an asset by writing code that I can reason about, which by definition requires it to be SOLID, and with minimal responsibility per function.
Lately, I’ve been using AI to generate sequence and class diagrams of the code to act as a high-level view of what’s going on. Major time saver.
Taking amphetamines improves this ability and can fix your issue. But the reason, is because you don’t enjoy this as much as writing code. You enjoying what you do gives you executive power and control over what you focus on, and getting more money is not something that allows you to overcome this, if it’s not stimulating, it’s not as easy for you to do it. This comment is sponsored by by amphetamine.
Jk but I took the route of doing what I love and damn the money. I have to use what dopamine reserves and energy I have on other things in life, household and stuff, and if both drain me I am not as capable as if I adjust my priorities. And I have kids so it’s not hard to choose really. I still count this as a blessing, since when I do stuff I love and they don’t bore me, I can enjoy hyper focus and productivity, and then have energy for life too
I have a suspicion that a lot of people, when faced with this problem, just say “Sure, looks good to me. It’s legacy, so it’s been working forever,” and carry on with their day.
But - I could be mistaken.
Until you have to fix some bug some dude introduced seven years ago and is no longer working at the company.
