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Comment by fsckboy | Hacker News Reader

I feel like there is a correlation between fast-twitch programming muscles and technical debt. Some coding styles that are rewarded by fast compile times can be more akin to "throw it at the wall, see if it sticks" style development. Have you ever been summoned to help a junior colleague who is having a problem, and you immediately see some grievous errors, errors that give you pause. You point the first couple out, and the young buck is ready to send you away and confidently forge ahead, with no sense of "those errors hint that this thing is really broken".

but we were all young once, I remember thinking the only thing holding me back was 4.77MHz

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There's a lot of value in a short iteration loop when debugging unexpected behavior. Often you end up needing to keep trying different variations until you understand what's going on.

Yeah there’s a large body of research that shows faster feedback cycles help developers be more productive.

There’s nothing that says you can’t have fast feedback loops _and_ think carefully about your code and next debugging loop, but you frequently need to run and observe code to understand the next step.

In those cases even the best programmer can’t overcome a much slower build.

thank you for quickly writing the fast twitch response! :)

> I feel like there is a correlation between fast-twitch programming muscles and technical debt.

Being fast doesn't mean you do everything at maximum speed. Usain Bolt doesn't sprint everywhere he goes, but he can sprint quite fast when he needs to do so.

saying there's a correlation is already tempering the statement. can you imagine a scenario I could be referring to? that's the one I'm talking about

Slow build times make everything slower, including refactoring tech debt (which means people are less likely to do it).

I didn't say faster build times weren't faster. I said people whose entire focus is on speed will speed-read the cliff notes instead of fully reading the original Shakespeare. There's a difference.

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