What is the best aproach for coding in a slow compilation environment

Posted by Andrew on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Andrew
Published on 2011-02-22T13:01:49Z Indexed on 2011/02/22 15:32 UTC
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I used to coding in C# in a TDD style - write/or change a small chunk of code, re-compile in 10 seconds the whole solution, re-run the tests and again. Easy...

That development methodology worked very well for me for a few years, until a last year when I had to go back to C++ coding and it really feels that my productivity has dramatically decreased since. The C++ as a language is not a problem - I had quite a lot fo C++ dev experience... but in the past.

My productivity is still OK for a small projects, but it gets worse when with the increase of the project size and once compilation time hits 10+ minutes it gets really bad. And if I find the error I have to start compilation again, etc. That is just purely frustrating.

Thus I concluded that in a small chunks (as before) is not acceptable - any recommendations how can I get myself into the old gone habit of coding for an hour or so, when reviewing the code manually (without relying on a fast C# compiler), and only recompiling/re-running unit tests once in a couple of hours.

With a C# and TDD it was very easy to write a code in a evolutionary way - after a dozen of iterations whatever crap I started with was ending up in a good code, but it just does not work for me anymore (in a slow compilation environment).

Would really appreciate your inputs and recos.

p.s. not sure how to tag the question - anyone is welcome to re-tag the question appropriately.

Cheers.

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