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Comment by dmethvin | Hacker News Reader

Quite often you have to manually do the task at least once to determine how to automate it. That tells you your upper bound on how much time can be saved.

If for example it only took 15 minutes of manual work it's highly unlikely that the payback of automation would occur any time soon. That's especially true because the 2nd or 3rd time there may be different special cases and you'd have to go back and change your automation.

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Automation's payoffs aren't necessarily in time saved. Quality can be a more important consideration. "Did I forget a step?" "Did I forget to verify this aspect of the configuration?" "Oh ... am I sure I typed in the new domain name correctly each of the eight times I needed to type it in in the various contexts?"

Automating a task usually means each important parameter is entered only once, that all steps are completed, and that the results are checked.

Of course if we agree programming is not so easy, verifying that the script actually works as intended will take roughly the same time. Not to mention thinking about what it should do when faced with an unusual situation.

Automation can still be a benefit even if it initially takes more time. People doing repetitive tasks make mistakes.

Spend 10 hours writing a script to automate 50x10 minute jobs. You spend an extra hour, but you end up with 50 consistent results, rather than 40 successful jobs and 10 with minor mistakes.

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