Hey Diego;
I would say it depends. Bob is correct in that you can spend all of your time writing/perfecting code if you’re not careful. Writing is the core idea here, but sometimes the code does help flesh that out. My book is being written around the code. It’s about a technology, but the showcase for that technology is a project that we’re spending the majority of the book writing to exercise that tech. Without writing the examples as I go (and running and occasionally debugging them), I think I would have missed a few things. I know of at least two cases where writing out code made me realize a few things I had missed and/or glossed over.
The kicker is finding what works for you. As long as you’re careful and aware that you might be peering down the rabbit hole you should be able to realize when you’re headed that way.
One thing I do is use the pomodoro timer href=”http://pomodoro.ugolandini.com/”>http://pomodoro.ugolandini.com/ Every odd minute I get a growl notification which helps serve as a quick “am I still on track” token. Keeps my tangents down to 2 minutes or less if I’m always mentally double checking that I’m working toward the right goal.
-T
