This originally seemed like an Inform 6/7 question, but I’m curious how often people compile their works.
I recently went two days without meaningfully compiling (beyond saying, oh, look, basic stuff broke) while I was adding a hint system and general details and figured I could play catch-up pretty quickly. I was right. I liked not losing the routine of just typing stuff in. It was a big advantage to be able to stay focused.
And of the code I added, I wrote down tests I needed to go through with anyway–tests that may be better done all at once, instead of switching from testing to programming and back. Or stuff that can be quickly sorted out in Emily Short’s Property Checking or Juhana Leinonen’s Object Response Testing.
But on the other hand, when I have a new feature, or I need to add a puzzle to my game, I obviously need to compile much more frequently and run my standard tests to make sure my change works or find a bug–and document if I need to fix it later. Or at the very least, I want to document with a [??I can’t handle case X right now but I need to sort it out].
Obviously the amount of time compiling/testing is inverse to the complexity, but I’m wondering if there are some simple sensible ways to cut down what I need to compile/test, when, so I can focus on adding fun narrative stuff.
Are there any general guidelines I’ve missed? I’ve googled “how often to compile” and such but wondered if there were anything specific to certain languages here.
Also, are there any safety-nets that can be installed so you don’t need to compile/test as much? Obviously, it’s not a major distraction, but not needing to compile is handy when I get home late and just want to tear through a chunk of my program. I’m just wondering how risky this is, or if other people enjoy being able to set aside time where they just add ideas and don’t hit F5.
I’m not sure if I’m phrasing my question correctly, here, or even if it’s meaningful. But I had a good experience not working with anything technical for a few days, and with lumping relatively simple low-risk tasks together, and I’m curious if other people have found this, too–or the opposite–or if they’ve found it a truism they should work this way.