coding drunk

The act of writing code while drunk. This is more fun than it sounds. For even more excitement, place absurd comments at random throughout the code. One of the best I have heard (and since adopted for my own) is /* drunk now, fix later */

alternatively,
#drunk now fix later
may be used

When I worked in a computer science/psychology laboratory at Brandeis University at age 17, the professor who ran the lab was Canadian. He believed that no good programming could get done without a beer next to your computer, and thus I spent my days at that summer program more inebriated than during my nights.

Once upon a time my friend Jimbo coded drunk while working on a JavaScript project. He was having a hell of a time with this thing and had been hitting his belt flask (yes, he really owns a belt flask) pretty hard out of frustration. Finally, after three hours or so, he got it working and passed out. What he neglected to do was remove all his alert() tests that he had put in to check his function calls. He handed his source in the next day, none the wiser.

One week later we got our assignments back. I got a 4/4, he got a 0/4. It didn't take us long to figure out why. Circled in red with an arrow pointing to "What the hell is this!" in big letters was alert('MY NUTS ARE PRETTY');

He has not coded drunk since.

I find far greater clarity when I code drunk. For some strange reason, a few beers always seem to allow the code to flow freely and with much greater creativity and insight. Works especially well when I am having trouble with a particular chunk of code. I suggest all programmers try this at least once. At worst you look at your work sober and laugh at all the insane comments you placed while drunk.