Is It Worth The Time? XKCD 1205 updated for open source and shared tools.

sparr@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 481 points –

People often ask why I contribute to open source projects or otherwise work on building automated tooling. They see me spending hours to automate a task or fix a bug that take seconds to do or avoid manually, in a way that the original XKCD comic says won't pay off. The disconnect seems to be that the comic and those people only consider time it saves me, not time it saves the tens to thousands to millions of other people who will use the script or patch or whatever when I publish it. So, here's a version of xkcd.com/1205 updated for making decisions that benefit a thousand people instead of just one.

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I'm just trying to think of anything that I do 50x a day that takes five minutes.

How many things does anyone do 50x a day, period? Apart from autonomic body functions I can't think of anything. I probably don't even stand up 50 times a day.

Sending emails, opening files, checking the database. Those are quite mundane everyday tasks of every office clerk.

Copy, cut, paste, undo. Use those keyboard shortcuts and if you work with documents for a notable part of the day you will save a half day a year or so.

I know some people who still do that with the right click menu. Then again, they don’t really copy-paste stuff very often. Maybe only once a week or so.

I'm going to click the [-] thread collapse button on Lemmy 50 times in the next ten minutes.

I click the left mouse button more often each day, also when you work in a production facility you have a bunch of repetitive tasks, automating them is pretty much was humanity did in the last century.

I click the left mouse button more often each day, also when you work in a production facility you have a bunch of repetitive tasks, automating them is pretty much was humanity did in the last century.

How can we shave a second of the time it takes for you to click the left mouse button?

Automate it.

When you press a button on this revolutionary machine, it will automatically left click for you!

Something we talk about at my job is being able to do stuff in our UI with less clicks, less is better.

My mouse seems to believe there is no use case for more than ten right clicks in a row, so it corrects them to left clicks. Sucks for minesweeper.

That area of the chart is for people with really repetitive jobs/hobbies. There are MANY jobs where you do the same 5-10 minute thing 50x a day.

I have a lot of repetition in my job (CAD modeller). Even just knowing keyboard shortcuts & setting up shortcuts for frequently used operations can easily net me 5 seconds per operation. I want to spend my energy on solving the task at hand, not on how to use the tool in the moment. I don't want to move the mouse away from the work area if I can help it.

Maybe not as frequent 5 per day - but scripts for really bottom of the barrel stuff:

  • Cycle thru all currently open drawing documents, zoom to full page and force save.
    • zoom out ensures drawing can be identified from document thumbnail.
    • the software is known to crash, especially editing drawings.
    • easy 10mins duplicated work saved.
  • Printing all open drawings out to the office printer in order with a delay between them, so i don't spend the next 20 minutes manually sorting the drawing prints.
    • printers don't always print in incoming order, some documents take longer to process.
  • find/replace for text notes
    • the software doesn't have that feature.

Lining up my indent levels.

Consider using an auto formatter. I just barf my code into the editor, press a magic key combo and it’s all formatted better than I could do by hand.

That's the point. I automate it so I don't have to do it manually multiple times a day. I don't even press keys, it autoformats on periodic save.

Write emails? At 250min, or 4 hours it's either a major repetitive work task or a hobby.

Or if you're into wargaming or model making, assembly tasks or painting.

Write emails? At 250min, or 4 hours it’s either a major repetitive work task or a hobby.

Remember though, this is the amount of time savings something has to represent.

So you still have to accomplish the task.

So doubling it: your entire repetitive job. Would have efficiency increased to halve the time. Pretty rare.

I mean, there are some lower hanging fruit.

For example, if it takes 10 minutes to poop, but you can get that down to say, 5, with a decent centerfuge, across an entire company (1000 people, assuming every one is pooping five times a day).