Time for #DevDiscuss!
Tonight's topic is Personal Automation!
- When do you choose to automate a task?
- Do you have a type of task you like to automate?
- What's difficult about automating tasks?
#DevDiscuss I automate every task when I start to feel upset when I know I must do it. The only hard part is telling what is fully automatable and what will need a brain to work.
1) I "try" my best to DRY 2) Currently using Tasker app to automate alot of workflows on my android device 3) Depending on the task the steps and configurations required to make it effortless lol Alot of time commitment just to automate something #devdiscuss
I automate a task when I have to do it many times a day. Small things such as bash aliases for git or trimming empty whitespaces when exiting vim saves a lot of time #DevDiscuss
Time for #DevDiscuss!
Tonight's topic is Personal Automation!
- When do you choose to automate a task?
- Do you have a type of task you like to automate?
- What's difficult about automating tasks?
Before attempting automation, I take lots of notes in a journal and see what (if anything) about it is *consistently repetitive*
Sometimes it is possible to simplify a workflow by eliminating unnecessary steps or introducing a checklist, without writing any code. #devdiscuss
I choose to automate as much as I possibly can. If it's something that I spend doing for a few minutes every couple days, I can spend an hour and automate it.
The biggest difficulty you run into is complexity and variants.
#devdiscuss
Time for #DevDiscuss!
Tonight's topic is Personal Automation!
- When do you choose to automate a task?
- Do you have a type of task you like to automate?
- What's difficult about automating tasks?
I don't have great habits around automating my day-to-day dev tasks. I let muscle memory do too much work.
But when tasked with non-development work on my computer I really work eliminate the tedium. No idea how non-developers do it! #DevDiscuss
Time for #DevDiscuss!
Tonight's topic is Personal Automation!
- When do you choose to automate a task?
- Do you have a type of task you like to automate?
- What's difficult about automating tasks?
I don't always use personal automation TBH, but I've found that even in my non technical life there is a lot of things to automate and make my life easier, like scheduled tweets and email marketing #DevDiscuss
Time for #DevDiscuss!
Tonight's topic is Personal Automation!
- When do you choose to automate a task?
- Do you have a type of task you like to automate?
- What's difficult about automating tasks?
If I have to do something 3 times or more and I know its not a one-time thing. I automate it. Manual, redundant, non-value adding tasks I tend to automate the most. The trick is finding the balance between taking the time to automate versus wasting to much time. #DevDiscuss
I used to automate a ton of work stuff when I was writing code full time (and doing data analysis work before that). I think that's actually what I like about teaching and blogging -- you can't really automate it away because it's always a different challenge. #DevDiscuss
Time for #DevDiscuss!
Tonight's topic is Personal Automation!
- When do you choose to automate a task?
- Do you have a type of task you like to automate?
- What's difficult about automating tasks?
#DevDiscuss The forth time I perform a task I write a script to do those tasks. I make myself do tasks a few times to make sure scripting is really justified
If I have to do something 3 times or more and I know its not a one-time thing. I automate it. Manual, redundant, non-value adding tasks I tend to automate the most. The trick is finding the balance between taking the time to automate versus wasting to much time. #DevDiscuss
#DevDiscuss re: personal automation, what are y'all automating. I'm curious to see how you interpret that word. I feel like things like code compilers are automation, but are they? /shrugs
I am a big fan of autonomation (i.e. human in the loop automation) so rather than trying to fully automate a task up front I tend to build small tools that help me do individual parts of a task faster and with fewer errors and then let my workflow gradually evolve. #devdiscuss
"A few years ago I fell in love with If This Then That (IFTTT)."
Great post on tonight's #DevDiscuss topic
"Every developer should write a personal automation API" by Matthew Watkins #DEVcommunityhttps://t.co/FMV1Pf3kDr
A few things I consider when automating:
- shouldnโt take you longer to automate the task than it will take to run it manually over the tasks lifetime.
- (if complex) reusable through configuration
- system agnostic (I.e. shareable across a team)
#Devdiscuss
Time for #DevDiscuss!
Tonight's topic is Personal Automation!
- When do you choose to automate a task?
- Do you have a type of task you like to automate?
- What's difficult about automating tasks?
Some helpful things I've automated:
* A script that creates random groups of students
* A productivity journal that populates via cron job
* I'm super reliant on bash aliases and text editor tools
* I have really great deploy processes set up for my apps
#DevDiscuss
Time for #DevDiscuss!
Tonight's topic is Personal Automation!
- When do you choose to automate a task?
- Do you have a type of task you like to automate?
- What's difficult about automating tasks?
If there's a repetitive task frequently on my plate that I don't enjoy doing, I try to find a way automate it. If I can't automate it, I try to find someone else to do it for me. ๐ #DevDiscuss
Time for #DevDiscuss!
Tonight's topic is Personal Automation!
- When do you choose to automate a task?
- Do you have a type of task you like to automate?
- What's difficult about automating tasks?
Personal automation? I can do it for development tasks, but I haven't considered personal tasks! What sort of things are you all automating? #DevDiscuss
The nice thing about automating those small tasks is that the minimal effort makes it worthwhile even if it is just to solve minor annoyances. Keeping those small tweaks synced between home and work computers can lead to huge frustration. #Devdiscuss
Nondev related, I once wrote a quick script to continuously monitor IKEA inventory so that I could get a specific color of a chair that was going out of stock. #DevDiscuss
The fundamental question of automating a task:
Would you rather spend at least 3 more days a year fighting robots, or just continue to perform the task?
#DevDiscuss
I'm building a blog and because I have a day job, I can't be tweeting during the day. I use @WeLoveTweetdeck to schedule a few tweets related to my topics. If work is super busy, at least I tweeted a few times during the day. #DevDiscuss
In reply to
@philnash, @ThePracticalDev, @WeLoveTweetdeck
The best thing I've automated is my computer setup script.
I can set up or refresh a machine in about ten minutes, restoring everything from configs to creating new ssh keys.
It's been a great thing. #devdiscuss
Time for #DevDiscuss!
Tonight's topic is Personal Automation!
- When do you choose to automate a task?
- Do you have a type of task you like to automate?
- What's difficult about automating tasks?
The nice part of being a software developer nowadays is that the languages and systems are mature enough that if some task might need automation, there is likely already a solution for that out on GitHub or somewhere else #DevDiscuss
Time for #DevDiscuss!
Tonight's topic is Personal Automation!
- When do you choose to automate a task?
- Do you have a type of task you like to automate?
- What's difficult about automating tasks?
I think a basic form of personal automation is to alias a two-or-three-step command into one shorter command. Git aliases for example:
https://t.co/8JwfaS1i9d#DevDiscuss
Ahhhhh got it! I should actually set more reminders. I literally right everything down in books then it drives me crazy when I can't remember something and I don't have the book with me @ASpittel#DevDiscuss
If thereโs anything that Iโve learned from playing #factorio is that if youโre constantly micromanaging task then you must find a way to automate those task, even if it looks like spaghetti. ๐
P.S. DO NOT PLAY FACTORIO... it will ruin your life. #Devdiscuss
True automation solves those issues but it does potentially introduce a host of other issues (unexpected file path changes, read/write issues, proxy issues). And if theyโre not properly handled can easily go unnoticed. #Devdiscuss
Here is my repo to check out. It's not perfect, but does most of what I need.
Longest part is download/update xcode....
#devdiscusshttps://t.co/ldDq44HSlh
I've been somewhat impressed by iOS 12s shortcuts app.
A couple sweet workflows like sending pictures to a bunch of different people, or setting my volume go exactly 0.5% ๐
#DevDiscuss
Time for #DevDiscuss!
Tonight's topic is Personal Automation!
- When do you choose to automate a task?
- Do you have a type of task you like to automate?
- What's difficult about automating tasks?
I tried to automate building a couple SQL queries once... Now I'm the maintainer of a massive SQL query generator library in PHP. #DevDiscusshttps://t.co/af1x7lhUZo
True automation solves those issues but it does potentially introduce a host of other issues (unexpected file path changes, read/write issues, proxy issues). And if theyโre not properly handled can easily go unnoticed. #Devdiscuss
Learning curves aside I am referring to cases where the individual is familiar with the tools and techniques required to automate the solution. Personally I try not to over-engineer a solution and I encourage my team to do the same. #Devdiscuss
Oops, from trying to do less work to taking on a lot more work on behalf of others! Thank you for automating things for complete strangers. #DevDiscuss
Honestly, I always do things the hardway for a bit, just to make sure I get WHY it's happening. Even if it is a little time costlier in the beginning, in the end it helps my understanding #DevDiscuss
When I started my career back in 2004 I treid to automate everything. My peer at the time told me โyouโre going to automate yourself out of a job.โ Granted my efforts were recognized and I ended up working 13 years at that company but that advice stuck with me. #Devdiscuss
Time for #DevDiscuss!
Tonight's topic is Personal Automation!
- When do you choose to automate a task?
- Do you have a type of task you like to automate?
- What's difficult about automating tasks?
I setup auto-notifications for trash day vs. trash/recycling day alternating weeks. I still gotta take out the trash myself tho. ๐คทโโ๏ธ #DevDiscuss
I also set reminders to take my ADHD meds. It's a huge conundrum trying to remember to take the thing that helps you with remembering things. #RealTalk#DevDiscuss
Cross-posting my #doggopics from Instagram to Twitter using @MicrosoftFlow and @buffer ๐ End-result looks way better than just "sharing" from Instagram, too! #devdiscuss
In reply to
@philnash, @ThePracticalDev, @MicrosoftFlow, @buffer
Me and my colleagues use Trello to assign and set deadline for tasks. I created bot to remind the assignee for nearest upcoming deadlines via Telegram chat ๐ #devdiscuss
Sometimes it feels like the "dangerous" tasks should not be automated, but a lot of the times they are the ones that should be especially automated. As long as it's done with care, testing, and monitoring.
#devdiscuss
I forgot. Using IFTTT, I had a script that if the county said schools were closed on their FB page, send me a text, so I could enter my arrival status in my dept SharePoint site. #devdiscuss
Depends. If you are doing continuous integration and two week sprints then you may not have the same ebs and flows. If you have several large scale integrated releases with longs gaps between then maybe those tasks are better candidates for automation. #Devdiscuss
In reply to
@CMastication, @Scubbo, @ThePracticalDev
You could follow a similar path to my blog post there, but instead of scraping a web page, hit the Foursquare places API for nearby donut shops? #devdiscuss
My mom has a great budget method she taught me. In college I decided I was too busy to log all my transactions, so I automated it in google sheets with Node. I think I missed the point of the method... #devdiscuss
My automation is usually just a shell script or some Python code, both of which are pretty easy to open up in a text-editor and see my original intent. Sometimes I even remember to comment them. ๐
#DevDiscuss
So part of me loves that, but personally I get more reactive vs proactive about my money if I log my expenses that way. If I log them, it's almost like balancing my checkbook and I feel the pain of spending and it keeps me in check. #DevDiscuss
I keep it simple:
If I have to do it to get to the stuff I care about it can probably be automated.
What's difficult is asking the "if I should" rather than "if I can" #DevDiscuss
Time for #DevDiscuss!
Tonight's topic is Personal Automation!
- When do you choose to automate a task?
- Do you have a type of task you like to automate?
- What's difficult about automating tasks?
Most of my automation is file management. Podcasts and comics. Download nightly, sort into various folders, renaming things in sensible ways based on metadata, etc; then batch-moving them to the device(s) on which I consume them.
#DevDiscuss
I wrote a script that would download Newspaper and Entertainment Digest from the popular local media house in [ NEPAL. ] available daily, weekly. Then i setup the script with CRON Job to get them.
I usually surf them at 8AM and tada they are already there. #devdiscuss
Time for #DevDiscuss!
Tonight's topic is Personal Automation!
- When do you choose to automate a task?
- Do you have a type of task you like to automate?
- What's difficult about automating tasks?
The day that Twitter and Instagram fell out was a sad day for images on the web. Have you written up how you did this? Would love to have a read! #devdiscuss
In reply to
@koskila, @ThePracticalDev, @MicrosoftFlow, @buffer
I think the idea of what "automation" comprises of is not always straightforward. If I press a button and "one" thing happens, is it not the same as pressing a button and having "one thousand" things happen?
In computer land that "one" thing is probably very complex #DevDiscuss
Especially nice if the reminder-text sends you context too. I've had a couple of those that I do infrequently enough that it's nice to have the reminder also spoon-feed me the "go to this URL, do this thing" so I don't have to look up instructions again.
#DevDiscuss
This probably sounds simple (and it is), but as someone who works from home: a simple script to mute my desktop speakers automatically at 6pm works wonders. #devdiscuss
Time for #DevDiscuss!
Tonight's topic is Personal Automation!
- When do you choose to automate a task?
- Do you have a type of task you like to automate?
- What's difficult about automating tasks?
Tomorrow is my birthday! My gift to myself is that I am finally launching my accessibility blog that I was talking about last week! If you'd like to learn more, subscribe to my newsletter :) https://t.co/tpfSRY2tlG#DevDiscuss
Sheets, yes, because I don't really have an observable threshold as to when it gets grotty/dirty enough to warrant a wash/change. Similar for pillowcases. #DevDiscuss
Haircuts....well I'm growing out my hair at the moment, so no ๐
I usually make a note of any task I have repeated more than twice and work to automate the task. It is not a hard and fast rule, but it gives me a list to work off of. I also listen to @automatorsfm and read @rosemaryorchardโs blog. Great stuff! #DevDiscuss
Time for #DevDiscuss!
Tonight's topic is Personal Automation!
- When do you choose to automate a task?
- Do you have a type of task you like to automate?
- What's difficult about automating tasks?
Also, I wrote up a new post on animating with the canvas in @reactjs: https://t.co/Xt1OUO7SPN. I'm still getting to grips with React, so would appreciate any feedback! #DevDiscuss
I made a YouTube channel! It's not much yet but I have a lot of ideas for it, and I'm kinda getting used to it! https://t.co/nXz0iseWGh
Also, I'm doing #WomenMake this month, follow along with the hashtag to see everyone's creations!
#DevDiscuss
I am back in the US and have some very exciting news. I am joining @thorn as a Software Engineer to build technology to end child sex abuse and sex trafficking. Very excited to take this next step and work on something that has a major impact in the world. #DevDiscuss
