[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > Two hours is a long time! Maybe it takes a programmer 10 minutes to get > his mind focused on a new project, but that still leaves 110 productive > minutes. I think many programmers in corporate environments would > regard 2-hour blocks as luxuries. I have wondered the same thing as you > (how to be productive during "gaps"), but in situations where I am > often waiting a minute for a program to compile or run, not hours. I > suggest immersing yourself in the second project during 2-hour gaps.
Yeah, I don't multitask very well, unfortunately. I think this specific situation is a little bit more frustrating than usual, because I don't really have a second project of nearly such priority, but I can't just go to the beach or something while these builds are running. Also, I'm not exactly trying to develop code for this task (i.e. implement a new subsystem involving writing a lot). Rather, I'm trying to make some small changes to a complex existing program, which means I make a few small edits, then end up having to rebuild, and take this huge delay before I can find the next bug, and by then I've lost all my context. I'm in somewhat of a hurry to finish this, but I'm slowed down a lot by all these rebuilds. The 2 hour builds are actually a big improvement since I chopped out some subsystems that were taking a lot longer. There's another issue too, which is that the codebase keeps changing as other people check stuff in, so by the time I've gotten done testing my stuff, I have to sync up and test some more, etc. I suppose I'm mostly just blowing off steam by posting about this. I do think I might buy a Turion X2 1.6 ghz machine soon, which should be about 2.5x faster than what I'm using right now. Anyway, my build just finished so I better get back to it ;-). But I think the overall task is about done, unless there's another bug. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
