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This requires a context switch which is expensive in it's own way. Read the article, it covers this pattern pretty well.

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Even with the high end machine it still takes 27 minutes. If I have a 27 minute build I am absolutely going to context switch. If it’s more than about 3 minutes I am probably going to context switch.

An interesting experiment would be to find the switch-time threshold for a wide range of developers.

Typically I don’t rely on a full build for getting things accomplished, and not CI if I can help it. Local, incremental, and minimal path to feedback is what I aim for.

It may be non-linear. I guess I am not patient. If it takes up to ~40 seconds I just wait and don't context-switch; if it takes more than ~3 minutes I switch to another work-related task; but if it's in between -- I tend to check the e-mail, or the news, or something like it, and then 15 minutes later "Oh shit! My build\test is done, and I completely forgot I was doing it!"

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