Ask HN: What do you do while compiling?

3 points·coryfklein··6 comments

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?

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Since 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.

I 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.

I 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.

Nowdays 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.

I would look away from any monitors or phones..

usually stretch and enjoy the view from my window.

HN too. :)

Go stand up and walk around. Stretch. It's good for you.

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