Iteration Time is (arguably) the Most Important Thing

When programming, I care about iteration time. A lot.

It affects my choice of tech stack dramatically. Maybe more than most other single consideration besides ecosystem. And, unlike ecosystem, I don't think enough developers talk about iteration time.

Iteration time is the time it takes for you to write a change to a line of code and see that change reflected in whatever you're building. When this time is low, I can flow as a developer. Stay in the flow state, never leave context. Put on some good coding music (drum and bass, anyone?) and go for hours pounding coffee. :)

When build times become a consideration, this all flies out the window. Make a change, run a compile, oops now I'm browsing Hacker News or Tiktok. There goes 15 minutes! Oh wait, what was I doing again? So much time wasted, so many context changes! Productivity tanks by like 50%.

This is part of the reason why I love scripting languages so much, or Julia with its REPL-driven development. I much prefer dealing with runtime errors or mucking up some typing issue than breaking my flow state.

Maybe you're the same way. Or maybe you just don't know it yet.