Ask HN: What tasks do you automate? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#131

Post by crispyambulance » Sun, Jul 16, 2017, 9:27 PM UTC

dba7dba wrote: post #94

ajarmst wrote: post #22

I'm the kind of nerd who greatly prefers writing automation code to doing anything remotely repetitive. (I'm afraid to work out the actual timings because I'm pretty sure that I often spend more time coming up with the automation than just doing the task would take). I've got a script that automatically rips, converts and stitches together audiobooks from the library so that I can play them on my phone. It just beeps…

I go about automation in even less efficient way. I spend many months doing repetitive tasks. And than I realize I should automate them, and proceed to spend hours coming up with scripts/tools to automate them. Happens way too often...

There are some really clever people here, but as a general rule, you can't truly automate something until you can do it manually to the point where you're fully aware of all the snags and exceptions that may occur.

Once you reach that point, it then becomes a matter of trading-off how much time/money/effort it will take to automate the task against what benefit you get in return.

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#132

Post by arikr » Sun, Jul 16, 2017, 9:28 PM UTC

Great thread, thanks OP.

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#133

Post by spinlock » Sun, Jul 16, 2017, 9:29 PM UTC

I've automated deployment of my side project. When I merge a pr in github to master it will pull the new build and restart any process that's changed.

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#134

Post by dozzie » Sun, Jul 16, 2017, 9:32 PM UTC

tchaffee wrote: post #122

dozzie wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It's like choosing programming language by selecting the one that's easiest for you to learn. > It is. Is there anything wrong with that if the most important feature to you based on your requirements is that it be the quickest to learn? On its own it's not a wrong thing, but as I said, you didn't learn anything substantially different, so you're stuck with the approach that doesn't scale. You only added shell scr…

If I had spent the time to learn a "proper" configuration management system, it would have been a loss. I had a very limited amount of time to make it worth automating what amounts to a few hours of manual work. > you didn't learn anything substantially different So what? Learning something substantially different wasn't one of my requirements. My goal was to automate a few simple deployments, including my personal l…

>> You only added shell script SSH executor to your toolbelt

> You've said this enough that I'll push back. That's definitely wrong. [...] For one, [Ansible] checks the current state of the system it is configuring to determine whether or not software needs to be installed.

So you claim that Ansible learns the state of the system through some magic that is not possible to be called from shell? Because I could do pretty much the same in a shell script just fine.

I've seen a different paradigm for managing servers, I thought about it for a long time figuring out the differences from a shell script, and this is not where they are.

> I'm not even sure your claim [the approach doesn't scale] is true considering that there are some pretty big companies using Ansible

There are many big companies that throw money at dumb processes only to make them running, so this argument is pretty weak.

> [Ansible] was recommended to me by someone who is one of the better programmers I have met in my long career.

You see, precisely this is the issue here. It was recommended to you by a programmer. You should have asked a sysadmin, because this is where these tools come from and whose tasks they do. For some strange reason, programmers tend to avoid tools available to sysadmins, which is a quite big blind spot (even more so, since it's usually unrealized blind spot).

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#135

Post by fantispug » Sun, Jul 16, 2017, 9:32 PM UTC

I automated my wedding seating cards and plan.

I managed invitations as a CSV (who had been invited, who responded yes and no, addresses and dietary requirements).

I designed the placecards and seating plan as SVG in inkscape with special text I used as {templating parameters}.

I could then produce all my place cards and seating plan from a simple simple script. This was handy when guests changed their RSVP a week out from the wedding when I had little free time and I could make a change instantly. (Although admittedly I spent more time getting the layout right for the seating chart than if I had done it by hand).

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#136

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sun, Jul 16, 2017, 9:33 PM UTC

jf___ wrote: post #48

carving up marble with industrial robots https://vimeo.com/94076571 Cad -> robot code compiler is built on top of pythonocc

Interesting, do you have more information about what you're doing there?

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#137

Post by anfractuosity » Sun, Jul 16, 2017, 9:35 PM UTC

jf___ wrote: post #48

carving up marble with industrial robots https://vimeo.com/94076571 Cad -> robot code compiler is built on top of pythonocc

Wow, that's fascinating. On the pulley cutting mechanism, what kind of material is being used to cut the marble? Never seen anything like that before!

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#138

Post by agopaul » Sun, Jul 16, 2017, 9:40 PM UTC

dhpe wrote: post #101

I need to upload invoices every month from all ~20 SaaS products I subscribe to an accounting software. Most of the invoices can be just redirected from email to another SaaS that will let me download a zip file containing all invoices from a date range. Other software requires me to login to the product, navigate to a page and download a PDF or print an HTML page. I have browser-automated all of these laborious ones…

I've been thinking about automating this myself. Which Saas is it? ("another SaaS that will let me download a zip file containing all invoices from a date range.")

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#139

Post by Ant59 » Sun, Jul 16, 2017, 9:41 PM UTC

saimiam wrote: post #124

My day to day decisions are mostly automated - what to eat for breakfast? what clothes to wear any given day of the week? when to walk my dog and for how long? When to leave work and which back roads route to take to get back home? Lunch options? When to call the folks? Exercise schedule? All automated. It gets a little repetitive and boring at times but I'm able to save so much time and energy this way to focus on w…

It would be very interesting to know how you've gone about automating those things.

Re: Ask HN: What tasks do you automate?

#140

Post by dtech » Sun, Jul 16, 2017, 9:45 PM UTC

nfriedly wrote: post #114

Paying all of my bills. All of them. My bank (Fidelity) can connect to most bigger companies to have the bills automatically sent to them and then they automatically pay it (with an optional upper limit on each biller). For other bills, I got all but one to put me on "budget billing" (same amount each month, so Fidelity just sends them a check for that amount without seeing the bill). For Windstream, which varies by…

As an European, it seems amazing that you even need to automate half of this stuff/that it is a perk of a single bank.

Over here nearly everything recurring is done with direct debit, in which you authorize corporations to directly and automatically withdraw funds from your bank account, and it's a required feature if you want to connect to the European payment system. (don't worry, you can charge it back in case of errors or malice)