IMHO the #1 thing you can do for developer productivity is to reduce the development feedback loop to under 30 seconds and preferably under 10. Why? Longer than that and you have two choices:
1. Work on simultaneous tasks at once. This incurs a context-switching penalty; or
2. Get distracted by HN, social media, reddit or whatever. This has the same context-switching penalty and you can end up spending way more time on that distraction than the development loop actually needed.
I've worked on a code base where it took 3 minutes minimum to run a unit test. Some adjust to this mindset by doing more in a single test but even in the most optimal fashion it's not as good as quick turnaround.
1. Work on simultaneous tasks at once. This incurs a context-switching penalty; or
2. Get distracted by HN, social media, reddit or whatever. This has the same context-switching penalty and you can end up spending way more time on that distraction than the development loop actually needed.
I've worked on a code base where it took 3 minutes minimum to run a unit test. Some adjust to this mindset by doing more in a single test but even in the most optimal fashion it's not as good as quick turnaround.