What do you do while re(build|deploy|start)ing?

Question

What are good ways for spending the time waiting for my project to rebuild/redeploy/restart?

I am not interested in suggestions how to make these waiting times shorter. I know there are many tools, principles and practices for avoiding endless waiting times. But still several times a day I have to wait for some of these things to happen.

Suggestions would be:

• Visiting Stack Overflow...
• Reading a bit from a book
• Scanning mails
• Chatting to colleagues
• Getting some coffee

In my opinion not all of them are really helpful. There is alway the danger of being so distracted from your real work that you miss important details and make mistakes, which can cause additional waiting cycles.

What works well for you?

Answer 1

Twitter. You learn a lot in the river.

Answer 2

Wait and if possible think about the next problem.

If you're early on in the development cycle there are going to be errors that need fixing.

Later on - unless you are doing a complete rebuild - compile times shouldn't take that long.

Anything else will be a distraction.

Answer 3

I look at the build progress on my right-hand monitor and stackoverflow.com on the left one. If it is a big build I might go pick up a cup of coffee.

Answer 4

I slit my wrists. Honestly - one of the teams here has Code Analysis turned on for their projects; they don't pay heed to a single warning. Do you know how long it takes for VS to parse those warnings (about 24 000 in total - takes 3 minutes)?

Honestly:

• Take a smoke
• Get food
• Visit SO
• Do something on another project (most often a pet project)

Answer 5

Obligatory:

Answer 6

Plan your next steps. Diagram, write, sketch, fill your To-Do list. Prepare yourself for your next action.

And relax a little bit.

Answer 7

I actually go to stackoverflow during builds.

Answer 8

actually Stackoverflow and IRC , whether its during builds or not !

Answer 9

I often do what you are suggesting (especially visiting Stackoverflow and reading a book).

However, because building and deploying takes time, whatever you do, when you return you've probably lost your train of thought. So you don't need to minimize the time it takes to do these things, but rather you need to these as less often as possible. Thinking about a problem/bug is much more productive than actually running the system to debug.

Answer 10

Nethack or Crawl. Takes very little CPU, and both are turn-based so I can save & quit whenever my actual work is ready to be worked on again.

Answer 11

Review your code, think about issues you can improve and rework it afterwards. A programmers day without reworking is almost a lost day.

Answer 12

Make the build faster.

Answer 13

Check the temperature of the CPU, weather forecast, latest skill training in Eve - generally play with the widgets on the dashboard of the Mac.

Never, ever go browsing as I'd forget what I was doing...

Answer 14

I run it on one monitor and do some coding or reading on the other.

Answer 15

Watch out of the window and relax eyes...you may also close them, but don't fall asleep

Answer 16

I follow a GTD style of task management. I don't check email, handle paperwork (physical or digital), plan, or answer the phone (if it's important, they'll leave a message for me to check) while I'm focused on coding. I pick very specific intervals, times of the day to do these activities.

With that said, I'd suggest you take the time to spent waiting on builds to do these activities. Don't mix them in with your development time. Make waiting on builds your interval to do inbox processing and planning.