My personal anecdote about this is the time I was a student and a room mate and I were doing the same assignment that involved creating a program for some stati

My personal anecdote about this is the time I was a student and a room mate and I were doing the same assignment that involved creating a program for some statistical simulation. I had a 486, he had just gotten a brand new blazing fast pentium of the first generation. Compiling and running the simulation took eight minutes on my computer, three seconds on his. And in the end we started and finished around the same time. Because while he was iterating quickly, continuously changing something and running it again, I just sat in front my monitor contemplating the problem and my solution. When I finally got the chance to update my program, I was able to make a big, significant change. Lesson learned: it is not the computer time that is important, but the thinking time. And thinking time is spent best in big blocks, not in tiny slivers.