The Psychology of Computer Programming

by Gerald M. Weinberg

In another study—one designed to compare the efficacy of two different programming languages—several of the participants complained that the turnaround was too good! They had been given special priority in order to facilitate the study, with the result that the measured average turnaround was 31 minutes from the time the job was passed through the window until the time the output was placed on the output table. The complaint was that if turnaround had been a little poorer, they would have spent a bit more time in making corrections and in perusing their output for additional errors. In a way, then, if the programmer has invested very little waiting time in a run, he may tend to value that run less—an observation which seems to hold for certain terminal systems as well. At the other extreme, very poor turnaround puts the programmer in an almost neurotic state when he submits a run.

on duration/delay in test run and effect on behavior: too fast and we get careless, don't scrutinize code as much. too long and we go crazy (or don't test enough)