3 ms·

If the time required to write that perl script was longer than writing an email you should look into a different field.

delano 17y ago
Not if it takes you away from a task that requires your specific attention. Anyway, this kind of delegation doubles as practice for managing larger teams and companies. You need to get used to not doing every little thing.
- JeremyChase 17y ago
  I would argue that writing the email will require just as much thought because you have to define what you want. Regarding delegation, it is a good point. Knowing when do do something yourself is always a challenge. In my opinion, these tasks are far too trivial for a 'hacker' to give to someone else. Personally, I have a directory named "doodles" that is full of 2 or 3 line programs that do this kind of thing.
  - Elessar 17y ago
    The point of the article is this: There are many small tasks that you could do, but they are time-consuming and they are not your forte. Knowing when to delegate a task and when not to is something that comes from experience, and anyone working in a startup should do well to know that they are not alone in the world. So if you're great at Perl, that's fantastic. Go ahead, hack it in a minute or two. But for that guy who hasn't written Perl in a year, might need a google search or two to remind himself of the syntax, might even need to update his packages... well guess what? Maybe it's time to delegate and focus on other things you are even better at.
ericb 17y ago
If you think you are correctly estimating how long the script will take to write, and your estimate is "less time than writing an email," you should look into managing programmers in a large, clumsy corporation.
- JeremyChase 17y ago
  I am quite serious here. You already have the URI's, and you should be able to write this script in under 2 minutes. This reminds me of this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=703585 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=703585 The amount of time spent defining what you want is surely going to be equal to this.
  - thorax 17y ago
    > It took me exactly 90 seconds to get the request to him Depending on how you code it's likely to take you more than 90 seconds to: Fire up the editor, switch into mental design mode, create the initial script structure, write the script, figuring out authentication/cookie management issues, picking the right regex (or selector), and then debugging the typo or the 2 unexpected problems that came up (as they will on average). I think you can see the time and mental differences between that and: "Here is the URL and credentials, can you log in, visit each page in my gallery and send me a zip with all the pictures?" In the end you'll be more proud of a script approach, but that doesn't give you what you wanted in the first place-- i.e. avoiding the drain on your time when you have more important things to do.

Not if it takes you away from a task that requires your specific attention. Anyway, this kind of delegation doubles as practice for managing larger teams and companies. You need to get used to not doing every little thing.

JeremyChase 17y ago
I would argue that writing the email will require just as much thought because you have to define what you want. Regarding delegation, it is a good point. Knowing when do do something yourself is always a challenge. In my opinion, these tasks are far too trivial for a 'hacker' to give to someone else. Personally, I have a directory named "doodles" that is full of 2 or 3 line programs that do this kind of thing.
- Elessar 17y ago
  The point of the article is this: There are many small tasks that you could do, but they are time-consuming and they are not your forte. Knowing when to delegate a task and when not to is something that comes from experience, and anyone working in a startup should do well to know that they are not alone in the world. So if you're great at Perl, that's fantastic. Go ahead, hack it in a minute or two. But for that guy who hasn't written Perl in a year, might need a google search or two to remind himself of the syntax, might even need to update his packages... well guess what? Maybe it's time to delegate and focus on other things you are even better at.

ericb 17y ago

If you think you are correctly estimating how long the script will take to write, and your estimate is "less time than writing an email," you should look into managing programmers in a large, clumsy corporation.

JeremyChase 17y ago
I am quite serious here. You already have the URI's, and you should be able to write this script in under 2 minutes. This reminds me of this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=703585 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=703585 The amount of time spent defining what you want is surely going to be equal to this.
- thorax 17y ago
  > It took me exactly 90 seconds to get the request to him Depending on how you code it's likely to take you more than 90 seconds to: Fire up the editor, switch into mental design mode, create the initial script structure, write the script, figuring out authentication/cookie management issues, picking the right regex (or selector), and then debugging the typo or the 2 unexpected problems that came up (as they will on average). I think you can see the time and mental differences between that and: "Here is the URL and credentials, can you log in, visit each page in my gallery and send me a zip with all the pictures?" In the end you'll be more proud of a script approach, but that doesn't give you what you wanted in the first place-- i.e. avoiding the drain on your time when you have more important things to do.