Automating a One-Off Project

*WORKING ON A ONE-OFF PROJECT* I SHOULD PROBABLY AUTOMATE THIS STEP. IT WILL SAVE ME 6 MINS NEXT TIME. 3 HRS LATER ARE YOU DONE WITH AUTOMATION YET? LAST FEW BUGS. 6 HRS LATER WHY DON’T YOU JUST DO IT MANUALLY FOR NOW? GO AWAY.

A person working on a one-off project decides to automate a small step to save six minutes next time. Hours later, the automation has produced bugs and consumed far more time than doing the task manually, so the joke captures the familiar programmer trap of overengineering a simple task. It is sent as a reaction to spending excessive effort automating something that would have been faster to do by hand. EN: A person working on a one-off project decides to automate a small step to save six minutes next time. Hours later, the automation has produced bugs and consumed far more time than doing the task manually, so the joke captures the familiar programmer trap of overengineering a simple task. It is sent as a reaction to spending excessive effort automating something that would have been faster to do by hand.

• @gentoomemes / 6644 2023-10-04