If it’s a task that has to be done every day for 4 years, you’re actually saving time. And that’s if we assume only one person has to do it, if it’s 10 people, you’re saving time after 5-6 months. 10 minutes adds up quickly once it starts scaling.
Assuming you set it up perfectly the first time, instead of it breaking for some reason six weeks later and then you spend three hours figuring out/remembering how you set it up in the first place and another two nights after work fixing it so it works as intended.
Also your use case has changed, so it needs to be retooled to address the new situation.
5 years is also a pretty arbitrary span to go with. You could smoothly discount future time savings instead, but then your discounting curve is arbitrary.
The most rigorous way to go would be to set some kind of future goal, and then work your way backwards to find some kind of statistical description of the shortest path there, or else set some kind of future metric at a specific time and find the path that maximises it. This is pretty much how you design your investing portfolio, just with money instead of labour.
It’s more than that for me. I typically hate doing repetitive tasks but I love automating them and seeing my scripts or apps run or just checking a dashboard feels better.
If it’s a task that has to be done every day for 4 years, you’re actually saving time. And that’s if we assume only one person has to do it, if it’s 10 people, you’re saving time after 5-6 months. 10 minutes adds up quickly once it starts scaling.
Assuming you set it up perfectly the first time, instead of it breaking for some reason six weeks later and then you spend three hours figuring out/remembering how you set it up in the first place and another two nights after work fixing it so it works as intended.
Also your use case has changed, so it needs to be retooled to address the new situation.
Other than that… worth it.
There’s also a relevant xkcd for that.
Naturally, as with all things
5 years is also a pretty arbitrary span to go with. You could smoothly discount future time savings instead, but then your discounting curve is arbitrary.
The most rigorous way to go would be to set some kind of future goal, and then work your way backwards to find some kind of statistical description of the shortest path there, or else set some kind of future metric at a specific time and find the path that maximises it. This is pretty much how you design your investing portfolio, just with money instead of labour.
I mean, you could also leave comments in your code, but that’s just me
My comments:
// Do not change this timeout value. There’s a compatibility issue that causes requests to hang. Come back later to add details
// Should probably refactor this bit
// drunk, fix later
Just one layer removed from the problem.
“WTF does this comment even mean?”
It’s more than that for me. I typically hate doing repetitive tasks but I love automating them and seeing my scripts or apps run or just checking a dashboard feels better.
That does factor in on top of the time savings, definitely