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.
FYI: there is actually an XKCD font if you want to match the original more closely. github.com/ipython/xkcd-font
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’m just trying to think of anything that I do 50x a day that takes five minutes.
Makeitstop@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Not since I was a teenager.
blanketswithsmallpox@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Leave my mom out of this.
xantoxis@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
ptrknvk@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Sending emails, opening files, checking the database. Those are quite mundane everyday tasks of every office clerk.
SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
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.
sparr@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’m going to click the [-] thread collapse button on Lemmy 50 times in the next ten minutes.
LazaroFilm@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Type
;
in JS or C.knatsch@feddit.de 1 year ago
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.
sparr@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
autokludge@programming.dev 1 year ago
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:
zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 1 year ago
Lining up my indent levels.
psud@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Space space space space
bamboo@lemm.ee 1 year ago
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.
Neato@ttrpg.network 1 year ago
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.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Remember though, this is the amount of time savings something has to represent.
So you still have to accomplish the task.
muntedcrocodile@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I nolonger write emails chatgpt does that for me