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Comment by tegeek | Hacker News Reader

That's spot on. I mostly work with C#, F# in a day to day job and I build my code only a few times. This is also true when I work with Java, Angular and TypeScript. When I pick a new feature to implement I design that on paper with pencil and then mostly translate that to code. Mostly I can code for hours without compiling since this is where Typed Languages have strength.

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I York in C#, Java, and Go and I mostly use a combination of these modes. I will usually take some time to design a feature and write it out almost entirely before even the first compilation. Then, I will usually start a compile-run-debug-edit cycle to fix all of the off-by-one type errors, cover missed cases, the occasional wrong assumption etc.

I don't think typed vs untyped languages really makes a huge difference if you're designing code this way. The difference comes when the compiler can actually verify your design, if you don't compile it doesn't really matter what the compiler can check.

I guess it depends what you're working on.

I mostly work with C#, and occasionally I might only end up compiling the project a couple of times in a day, but I'll probably be building a test project several times in the meantime (e.g. after adding each test).

Alternatively, if I'm building a web GUI, I'll probably be building quite frequently, making sure that data is bound correctly and that the UI looks as expected.

Try to do design GUIs without compiling. :)

I agree that whenever I've to "adjust" something in HTML, CSS, its always a struggle with multiple tries and write-run-write-run cycle. But again, this has nothing to do with how you design and write code in a static language.

Sure it does, for example in SSR frameworks, you want the HTML template engine or UI designer to see those components.

That's very interesting. I can never work that way. I compile constantly (C++)

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