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Problem with that comic is that it doesn't take skill acquisition into account. Automating something increases your skills in automating things and therefore ca
by username90 6y ago
Problem with that comic is that it doesn't take skill acquisition into account. Automating something increases your skills in automating things and therefore can be worthwhile even if automating this specific task isn't.
Lets say that automating a task saving you 1 hour takes 10 hours. Is it worth it? No, you'd say. But what if you had 100 such tasks, and the time to automate them goes down as you become a better programmer taking a total 50 hours? Then it would be worth it, but you would never achieve that level of expertise and therefore lose that productivity increase if you followed the advice of that comic, since none of the tasks you'd come across would be worth automating when you got to them.
- perl4ever 6y ago>Problem with that comic is that it doesn't take skill acquisition into account. I'd argue it can help skill acquisition to avoid getting into one thing too deeply, because the more different items you do, the more the commonalities appear; the more chances you have to see if your approach is optimal.
- smallnamespace 6y agoKnowing what’s important, and having the discipline to focus on it is one of the most important skills to acquire.
- perl4ever 6y agoI think "having the discipline to focus on what's important" means consistently and periodically interrupting yourself, and asking "am I doing what's most important". I think there's a tension between this and the deep concentration or "flow state" that people like to talk about on HN. In effect, there are different value systems, and people have a hard time stepping outside of that.
- legends2k 6y agoThis! This is the reason we don't breed competent programmers often. The system has dumbed down most roles that a programmer is little more than a plumber. When there's that one occasion where it makes sense to write smart code folks aren't trainer for it and it becomes a viacious cycle.
- lelele 6y ago> Problem with that comic is that it doesn't take skill acquisition into account. This. Moreover, the frequency of a task may depend on its automation. We would not have Continuous Delivery today if someone didn't make the effort to automate deliveries, would we?