Software development tends to happen in cycles and it's good to be aware of this.

The innermost cycle is the edit-build-test-debug loop. You write or change some code, you build the software (assuming a compiled language), and you run the software to test it, either manually or by using automated tests.

Being the innermost cycle, it's probably where most of development time happens. It tends to pay to optimise it to make it as fast as possible. Each of the parts can be optimised. For editing, use an editor you like and are comforable with. Also, a keyboard you can type efficiently with. For building, use incremental building, and maybe turn off optimisation to make the build got faster. For testing, maybe run only the relevant tests, and make those run quickly.

Other cycles are:

• The TDD cycle: add a new test, add or change code to make test pass, refactor. This tends to embed the edit-build-test-debug loop. Usually at most minutes in length.

• Adding a minimal user-visible change: a new feature is broken into the smallest increment that makes the user's life better, and this is then developed, often using a number of TDD cycles.

• A "sprint" in Agile development: often a week or two or three, often adds an entire user-visible feature or other change, or several.

• A release cycle: often many weeks or months, adds significant new features. The set of added features or other changes, and the length of the release cycle are all often determined by business interests, business strategy, and often ridiculed by developers. This sometimes happens for open source projects too, however. For example, a Linux distribution might synchronise its own release schedule with multiple major, critical components it includes.

• The maintenance cycle: after the software has been "finished", and put into production, bugs and other misfeatures get fixed and once there's enough of them, a new release is made and put into production.

In each case, it is useful to know the intended and expected length of the cycle, and what needs to happen during the cycle, and what the intended and expected result should be. It is also useful to try to identify and remove unnecessary clutter from the cycles, to make things go smoothly.