this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2026
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Programmer Humor

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[–] Muehe@lemmy.ml 25 points 1 week ago
[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I know it's supposed to be a joke how a nerd will spend six hours writing a script to automate a 30second task but.... it's not really funny.

Working with less-experienced developers, I'm amazed at how slow everything is for them:  No keyboard shortcuts, no automated scripts, just slow, plodding mouse-driven tinkering.

Automation, shortcuts, and scripting drive your ability to iterate and therefore learn.

Train your fingers, and spend those hours automating repetitive stuff.  It's worth it.

[–] Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago

Experience doesn't even have much to do with it. I've seen developers working much longer than me do the same.

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 2 points 1 week ago

On the flip-side, when I learned Autocad, I customized the interface to be more efficient with my workflow - I worked significantly faster, probably saving 20-30 minutes a day by having my quick-access macros, etc.

Then I went to another location and started trying to work on a colleague's Autocad interface, and I was helpless - I had never learned the default command set, I had to describe to him what I wanted to do (like he was ChatGPT or something) so he could make it happen. Over the next year, I retrained to use the default command set - and because I was using it less and less the time-loss was becoming trivial at that point.

[–] jtrek@startrek.website 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Sometimes the manual steps grow like weeds. Where I'm at now, they haven't invested in automation much at all. Now deploys take all day. Making a code change is a sweaty manual regression search process. It's bad.

[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago

it's worse when everything is manual because they don't "trust scripts" due to them not fully understanding what automation means.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 4 points 1 week ago

I mean yeah but if the automated way is a quick command under a minute and its going to be used for years then great.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This is kinda why programmer was not a good for for me. By the time I script something its because doing it again and again has just gotten so annoying I finally get off my but and do it.

[–] Muehe@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 week ago

Bad news buddy, that's exactly how you become a programmer. /irony

[–] Dunstabzugshaubitze@feddit.org 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

hey, the 24 hours i invested were totally worth it to save 30 minutes of work over a year!

[–] Specter@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Great! Now you just have to ensure you stay at your job for at least 48 years so that this automation really starts to pay off!

[–] LORDSMEGMA@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

Why spend 10 minutes doing a task when you can automate it in 6 hours?

[–] DudleyMason@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 week ago

So then you break even after using the automation to do the task 144 times.

Seems like a decent trade-off