Casey (this is addressed to you as well as to anyone else who feels like chiming in), you have talked about the number of hours of coding done so far on the series multiple times, and I wonder what you think might be the difference between working 7 hours consecutively or 1 hour a day spread over many weeks.
Some pros with spreading the coding effort out across time might be:
-More time to (consciously and unconsciously) reflect on the problem you are solving, thinking about alternative solutions to problems, and maybe do some (offscreen) research into different topics.
-Distance yourself from your code so that you more quickly (counted in number of hours at the keyboard) find warts in the design, as you repeatedly have to parse your previously written code.
Some cons:
-The context switching from day to day as you forget a lot of details which were clear in your mind when the code was written.
-The overall loss of momentum which comes from not being able to plow through a troublesome area of the problem quickly which might affect morale.
-The risk of avoiding some hard problems as they might be difficult to tackle in short bursts of coding.
/Johan
Some pros with spreading the coding effort out across time might be:
-More time to (consciously and unconsciously) reflect on the problem you are solving, thinking about alternative solutions to problems, and maybe do some (offscreen) research into different topics.
-Distance yourself from your code so that you more quickly (counted in number of hours at the keyboard) find warts in the design, as you repeatedly have to parse your previously written code.
Some cons:
-The context switching from day to day as you forget a lot of details which were clear in your mind when the code was written.
-The overall loss of momentum which comes from not being able to plow through a troublesome area of the problem quickly which might affect morale.
-The risk of avoiding some hard problems as they might be difficult to tackle in short bursts of coding.
/Johan
Not sure I know the answer to this, really. I've never done "one hour a day" coding before, so this is my only experience with it, and it's not really a fair test because I have to explain things all the time, so half my brain is not concentrating on the code :)
In general, I would say that I don't find I need time away from code. If I'm working on something and I get stuck, typically I find it's much more productive to just switch to working on some other part of the code rather than to stop altogether.
- Casey
In general, I would say that I don't find I need time away from code. If I'm working on something and I get stuck, typically I find it's much more productive to just switch to working on some other part of the code rather than to stop altogether.
- Casey
An artist at The Witness is working at a personal project at a similar rythm. He has written a blog post about it, where he does talk about some of the issues you mention:
http://twelveminutesgame.com/2014/12/one-hour-a-day-every-single-day/
I do believe this approach has some advantages (if time constraints are not an issue), but as he mentions in the blog post there is a huge difference to Casey´s approach, which is being able to work on it for a few hours straight occasionally (of course not having to stop right at the one hour mark and not having to explain himself to an audience as he is working are also huge differences... but I guess you know what I meant).
I do wonder if some of those issues that are solved when spacing his keyboard time apart are due more to his inexperience as a programmer (I can't tell how experienced he is at programming from the blog).
http://twelveminutesgame.com/2014/12/one-hour-a-day-every-single-day/
I do believe this approach has some advantages (if time constraints are not an issue), but as he mentions in the blog post there is a huge difference to Casey´s approach, which is being able to work on it for a few hours straight occasionally (of course not having to stop right at the one hour mark and not having to explain himself to an audience as he is working are also huge differences... but I guess you know what I meant).
I do wonder if some of those issues that are solved when spacing his keyboard time apart are due more to his inexperience as a programmer (I can't tell how experienced he is at programming from the blog).