Question

I’m working on some pet projects and generally I sit around my personal computer about 22:30 or 23:00 to code. But since I try to sleep about 24:00 I don’t start coding and ending up reading articles, playing some games etc.

I don’t feel like I can write decent code in an hour, because the project is quite big and I don’t want to randomly or carelessly hack it. Even though I use TDD, most of the time stuff I’m doing is not straight forward which requires lots of testing before getting it right.

What’s your approach to these kind of issues? Do you just code later when you got enough time or do you have a different approach which allows you to code just for 30 minutes and continue later?

Answer 1

I generally don’t write lots of code until i have the time to do it. The reason is that for me to get effective takes focus and that takes a bit of time to be correctly focused. That said those 30min slots are great for

• Writing more tests: nothing like trying to get to 100% code coverage, and it’s not a big waste since you are investing
• Research: I spend lots of time reading blogs, looking for frameworks I can use or tools. Spending 30min finding a framework that does 80% of a feature you need is much better than spending hours trying to code it. The other factor to this is that if you implement the framework and you find it is a bad fit you are better educated in the needs which means your development will be smoother.