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A comment on Ben Nadel: Only Solve One Problem at a Time. Parent comment

Re:Ben Nadel: Only Solve One Problem at a Time by zelphirkalt on Thursday November 10, 2022 @01:39PM (#33551109)
That can be a horrible time sink as well though. Imagine if only changing one thing means, that you need a test cycle of 15 minutes or even if it is only 5 minutes. You will need 5 minutes per change then. If you know multiple things you still need to change ahead of time, you might also go ahead and fix them all, and then fix resulting or remaining issues after only running one test cycle.

I think it depends on the situation, what the best approach is. Is it a system, which is running in production and you are operating an "open heart"? Well, better only change one thing and check. Is is a newly developed thing, which you develop on your own dev machine? You can easily fix many things and many more will still remain for further iterations.

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Re:Ben Nadel: Only Solve One Problem at a Time by arise on Thursday November 10, 2022 @02:40PM (#33551960)
A notable historical example was NASA's "all-up" decision to launch all stages of the Saturn V on the first test: https://appel.nasa.gov/2010/02/25/ao_1-7_f_snapshot-html/

“In retrospect it is clear that without all-up testing the first manned lunar landing could not have taken place as early as 1969,” von Braun wrote. “It sounded reckless, but George Mueller’s reasoning was impeccable.”

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Re:Ben Nadel: Only Solve One Problem at a Time by d4mi3n on Thursday November 10, 2022 @02:51PM (#33552156)
I think this may be a misattribution of what soaks up time: is it the change itself or the friction of the process of making that change?

e.g. code changes are easy but merging and build procedures take a log of time, encouraging larger batches of concurrent work.

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Re:Ben Nadel: Only Solve One Problem at a Time by RhysU on Saturday November 12, 2022 @02:31PM (#33576227)
> Imagine if only changing one thing means, that you need a test cycle of 15 minutes or even if it is only 5 minutes.

Step 0: Shorten the test cycle.

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