Re: OT: productivity and long computing delays



beliavsky@xxxxxxx 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.
.



Relevant Pages

  • Re: Privileged Instruction exception in Release build
    ... Did you do a full rebuild after changing the size of any structures ... virtual methods, or making an existing method virtual, or making an ... Possible uninitialised memory problem, leading to data corruption, ... Possible bad message map, leading to stack corruption, leading to bug ...
    (microsoft.public.vc.mfc)
  • Re: VS 2005 Win 32 Console Project Behavior
    ... I cannot repro also this but this does look like a bug in IDE of Visual ... > When we use Visual Studio in beginning C++ classes, ... > However, If I select Rebuild ProjectName or Rebuild Solution, the output ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vc)
  • Re: SimEvents2.0 questions (Libraries & Subsystems)
    ... This has been identified as a bug in SimEvents v2.0. ... SimEvents v2.0 doesn't support non-scalar signal input to a Discrete ... Any signal inputs to Discrete Event Subsystem must ...
    (comp.soft-sys.matlab)
  • Re: Bugzilla permissions
    ... reluctant to make it a complete free for all and let any new user edit ... any bug. ... However, for anyone running a subsystem, or anyone else ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: [BUG] New Kernel Bugs
    ... kernels before I happen to install it, discover it's broken on my own ... Given a decent bug report, I agree that having the bug not looked at is ... failure in subsystem B, and the report initially lands on the desk of the ...
    (Linux-Kernel)