[dboreham]

Hmm. I think you did have a mental model. What they're really complaining about is that you ran your code before it was complete, or at least before it was more complete than they would prefer.

I'm going to say that the point about edit compile run cycle is valid, but only in the context of a programming environment that actually has a long cycle. They didn't ask you to use one of those. So ultimately they're wrong or at least so uptight and annoying that you shouldn't go work for them.