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Ask HN: What do you do while compiling?
As a software engineer I regularly encounter occasional downtimes on the order of 1-3 minutes. My knee-jerk response is to pull up HN, but that usually turns into a 10 minute downtime (or worse). What do you do to prevent loss of focus during these times?
- zo1 12y agoSince I don't have such downtime due to waiting for compiles, I'm not entirely sure what advice to offer. Except: Maybe you should spend that time trying to fix your long compile/recompile times. Odds are you're re-compiling too much, or your binary is quite monolithic and includes items that could be put into separate DLLs/shared objects.
- informatimago 12y agoI browse the internet shops for faster hardware. I used to continue editing code, but this is a bad idea, since I've got the "save" reflex activating every 10 second, so the compiler breaks on incomplete newly saved code.
- RollAHardSix 12y agoHN too. :) Go stand up and walk around. Stretch. It's good for you.
- bluerail 12y agoI would look away from any monitors or phones.. usually stretch and enjoy the view from my window.
- wglb 12y agoNowdays I mostly use languages that have no or very short compile times, e.g., Lisp, ruby. An embarrassing amount of my glue code is in bash.
- amarraja 12y agoI currently work on a large C# app, and even though we got the compile times down to sub 30 seconds, I suffer from the same issue. Nowadays, I will usually work on a feature in isolation in a new project so I get a nice focused feedback loop. It doesn't stop the procrastination when I have longer compiles, but it reduces the frequency at least.