Background compilation vs background unit test runner

A few months ago I posted about how to get background compilation in Visual Studio by using Resharper. It's really remarkable how background tools like these can improve your productivity. Sure, you'll have to learn to ignore the red wiggly lines until you're done typing. In that respect it is no different than the spell checking in Word or Firefox. But once you know when to check the results and when to ignore them, background compilation with "in code" feedback is a real time saver. I probably would have worn out my ctrl-shift-B combo long ago without it.


This week I noticed that even though compilation is automatic, you still have to start unit tests manually. And while they're running, you have to wait for the unit tests to complete before you can continue working on your code. And if you have a substantial set of tests, like the good test-driven developer, running them may take a few minutes. So running the tests is quite disruptive to the development process.

And as you probably know, if something breaks the flow of your development process you probably won't do it as often as might be useful. Why are continuous build systems so good? Because they work automatically when you check something into your version control system. Why is background compilation so good? Because it works automatically as you're making changes to the code.

So why can't we then have the unit tests running in the background? Sure, it'll eat up some resources. But it's not like my machine needs all its megahertz's to keep up with my typing anyway. And I can only imagine how great it would be to automatically see a purple line appear under some code I just changed that broke one of the unit tests.

Sounds like cool stuff to me. Does anyone know if this already exists?

Catching up

I just returned from an 8 day holiday. And since this was a bicycle holiday in the center of France, I've been disconnected from the internet for over a week. So of course today I'm spending much of my day catching up with what's been going on. And the amount time it takes to catch up these days is starting to worry me.

It's amazing -to me at least- how much information I apparently consume during a normal week. There were about 300 emails at work and in private mail boxes. Granted, most of these were automatic emails from build systems, newsletters and the like. But even after scanning those, there are still about 60 emails that require my genuine attention. To some of you that might be peanuts, but to me it means another 5 to 6 hours to read and answer them. And that is excluding the time I've already spent this morning answering email from friends who were apparently unaware of my short holiday. Sorry guys!

But what I really start to notice is that these days most information reaches me through feeds (both RSS and Atom) via my trusted Google Reader. Although Reader refused to tell me anything more useful than the fact that I had 100+ unread items, a quick count shows that there were about 600 items in my list. That's a lot of news people!

Luckily I can quickly mark all items read in many feeds, like Slashdot and dZone. I normally quickly scan these feeds for interesting stories as they arrive, but I can easily skip a week. If something really interesting happened on any of those feeds, it'll probably show up on other feeds too.

But that still leaves me with feeds that I really value. Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror has been a busy guy and posted no less than five stories. I've already read a few, and they seem as interesting as ever. There is of course the weekly column by Cringely, which -although not always interesting to me- is a must read for anyone in tech. And after that, there's still TheServerSide, A List Apart, Ajaxian and many others. It looks like I'm fully booked for the rest of the day. People should really stop writing all this interesting stuff... at least while I'm on holiday.