While the world endlessly debates on what is an indie developer, one thing that is very common at indie developers that is not common at major development houses is the requirement to work with teammates that are spread across the world, all day, every day. Another difference is that optimizing every bit of juice out of your development setup is a major priority.

So here are some suggestions I have from spending many years online:

#1 Use Skype

I started out using IRC to communicate to my teammates around the world. In the past few years, we’ve migrated to Skype and it has made a huge difference in communications.

#2 Turn of Skype notifications

As nice is Skype is, it’s default is obnoxious. By default, Skype really isn’t very good as a development communication setup because it is constantly trying to distract you.   The first thing I do when I first install Skype is to go to tools->options->notifications and turn off pretty much everything.

#3 Turn off Skype sounds

As if that’s not bad enough, Skype likes sound effects.  So again, go to tools->options->sounds and disable all the sounds.

#4 Use Google Drive

I use SkyDrive (OneDrive or whatever it’s going to be called by the time you read this), Dropbox, and others. They’re fine but Google Docs gets the edge because it’s soooo good at collaboration. You get a news feed on what’s been changed in a given directory, it has really nice online tools for creating docs, and it’s really good at collaboration.

#5 When testing your program, DO NOT RUN IT FROM THE DEBUGGER. 

This is a mistake that even pros make regularly.  If you’re launching your program from the debugger you are probably losing a lot of wasted time.  Instead, run it normally, get to the point where you need to debug and then attach the debugger to the process.  

#6 If you’re not using Incredibuild or some other tools, make sure you’re using all your CPU cores when you compile.

This is not on by default for some reason.  In Visual Studio, go to the project properties, open C/C++, go to command line and MAKE SURE the /MP is there.  I’ve checked out a lot of our own projects and found it not to be there and that’s incredibly wasteful.  I have 6 cores on this box, that means a literal 6X perf gain.

#7 Make sure you invest in an SSD for compiling.

The time difference is worth it and if you’re an indie, time is your most valuable resource.

Hope this helps!