Comments on: Faster Compile Time / Test Movie via SWC

By: Marcus

Marcus — Tue, 04 May 2004 04:21:24 +0000

How appropriate. I found this entry while waiting for a long training piece to compile. It’s about 60 screens long and one of the requirements is that it be self contained. The compile time is around 5 minutes on a 1.13ghz PIII.

This project is due tonight, but for the next one,I’m sure your tip will come in useful. Thanks.

By: JesterXL

JesterXL — Mon, 03 May 2004 21:33:51 +0000

You know I love you, so to throw a monkey wrench in your points, by having more strict typing, that slows down compiling… I mean.. come on.

Besides, you make a great point. I come from the background of 3 day to 2 week deadlines. It’s all about the deadline, about making sure it looks or works just right for the client, and quickly. Thus, my paradigm of thinking is “get it done, and get it done quick”, and as always later “get it changed, and get it changed quick”.

By: darron

darron — Mon, 03 May 2004 20:52:38 +0000

Not trying to pick on you, but Flash has us spoiled as far as compile times go. Having to wait 30 seconds for a movie to compile is nothing compared to having to wait hours.

It’s very common for shops to check out code in the morning, work all day, and then check code back in and re-compile the application overnight because the compile takes that long.

For example, the AS Compiler I’m working on, which is more or less just a lexer/parser right now (and supports syntax checking) takes over 14 minutes to compile. Because of this, I’m forced to think about the changes I make for every build instead of trying something, see if it works, trying something else, see if that works, etc.

The slow compile times lead to better thought out code, to generalize. Of course, it oculd also lead to buggier code bceause people are less willing to tweak things here and there and spend hours rebuilding just to, say, get a label to move 3 pixles to the left.

Double edged sword. What was my point again?