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Learning to code vs. learning to automate

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Re: Learning to code vs. learning to automate

#161

Post by analog31 »

beefield wrote: post #108
andrepd wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>4. If I successfully automate it, all of my coworkers lose their jobs. A failure of capitalism when less work and more productivity is a bad thing.

If there is one thing that confuses me, that is productivity. You start doing the thing you were doing twice as fast earlier, thus your productivity doubles. Kind of, assuming that the price of your product does not change due to your increased productivity. If the price halves at the same time (e.g due to competitive pressure because you were not the only one to figure how to spend half the time doing same thing) yo…

Another way to look at it, is that your productivity equals your salary, i.e., marginal value added per unit of factor input. You work the same number of hours or years. You receive the same money. So your productivity is the same.

For the employer, the productivity of their capital investment has increased.

You might be able to increase your productivity if you can leverage a salary increase, or figure out how to sell the automation to your employer for more than your salary, or sell it to others.

Re: Learning to code vs. learning to automate

#162

Post by analog31 »

sigmaprimus wrote: post #23

When I was younger I dreamed up an idea of a shock suit, basically it would have been a set of long underwear top and bottom with electrodes that would act like a TENS machine to gently(or not so gently) nudge the wearers into performing a repetitive task with machine accuracy. I figured this would be great for an assembly line and could provide a cheaper alternative to a very costly robot while still providing emplo…

Obligatory Monty Python:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLMFSNIurqs

Re: Learning to code vs. learning to automate

#163

Post by JoeAltmaier »

beefield wrote: post #108
andrepd wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>4. If I successfully automate it, all of my coworkers lose their jobs. A failure of capitalism when less work and more productivity is a bad thing.

If there is one thing that confuses me, that is productivity. You start doing the thing you were doing twice as fast earlier, thus your productivity doubles. Kind of, assuming that the price of your product does not change due to your increased productivity. If the price halves at the same time (e.g due to competitive pressure because you were not the only one to figure how to spend half the time doing same thing) yo…

Folks often assign the output of automated systems to the creator. This seems a fallacy. The output of an engineer creating an automated system is, the automated system. The output of the automated systems is the product of … the automated system. Who owns that? In a capitalist system, whomever paid for it.

This is quickly becoming an issue. As industrial output is rapidly becoming exclusively the product of automated systems, the 'worker' becomes irrelevant. The limit is, none of us do appreciable work for standard goods. And since we're not working, we're not getting paid, and we can't afford the goods.

We're gonna need a new system.

Re: Learning to code vs. learning to automate

#164

Post by Thorentis »

freetonik wrote: post #101
nickjj wrote: post #78

If you're on Windows, Auto HotKey is the ultimate tool for automating day to day little things that are hyper specific for your daily work flow. For everything else there's Bash / some scripting language. You can end up with really big quality of life improvements from having a bunch of little things whipped up to solve your problems.

Can Auto HotKey recognize images and click on them? For example, a specific button in an app or a web page? This is one of the features that keeps me with Keyboards maestro, which keeps me from switching away from macOS.

Yes! You can search for Bitmaps on the screen. Take a screenshot and crop to the button, save it as a .bmp, and then use the ImageSearch function (https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/commands/ImageSearch.htm).

It will return the (x,y) and you can then use the Mouse functions to interact with that location.

Re: Learning to code vs. learning to automate

#165

Post by perl4ever »

ethbro wrote: post #100
dsjimi wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excel is the world's most popular IDE ;)

One of my weed out questions in programming interviews is to ask their opinion on Excel. Specifically, strengths and weaknesses. If they don't come up with at least one strength or spend the whole answer bashing it, that's an instant reject for any position touching UX.

I could bash it in ways you probably haven't heard before...

The clashing paradigms of the Data Model and "vanilla" Excel have really been aggravating me recently.

I feel like Excel is underutilized for cultural reasons and it seems like it can do anything I was previously asked to use Qlikview for.

But the fundamental reason I am using Excel these days is because I don't want to be subjected to a programming interview, ever again.

I got my current job without any particular technical requirements, and the interview was entirely about how I manage my time and multitask.

Re: Learning to code vs. learning to automate

#166

Post by perl4ever »

wiseleo wrote: post #129
solinent wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put what you've said more succinctly, even though reductionism is valid for a computer, there is no reason for us to reduce everyone to transistors. My mother is an accountant for example, and she could easily pick up SQL or a programming language, but the issue with teaching her one is that it doesn't solve any of her immediate problems. Excel already automates most of that work away, so for her that's all she ne…

If only she knew she could interact with Excel using SQL. I have shown that to some accountants and saw lightbulbs appear over their heads. :)

Are you talking about querying databases from Excel, or querying tables in your spreadsheet as if it was a database?

Re: Learning to code vs. learning to automate

#167

Post by perl4ever »

wiseleo wrote: post #125

How to motivate someone to learn a programming language. 1. Assign a repeatable task. 2. Incentivize to complete higher number of tasks. This can be a flat rate per task or flat number of tasks per day or something similar. 3. Let them work for a while to understand the process. 4. Now the idea to automate gradually appears in their head. 5. First automation appears. I usually start with command line loops and encodi…

"Smarter companies would offer to assign her the role of an internal software tool maker to identify processes and automate them."

Ah, but should she take that? Isn't a job as a developer/programmer really just a subterfuge by management to extract all the value produced by automation and not pay for it?

Re: Learning to code vs. learning to automate

#168

Post by perl4ever »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #19
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you prefer? Manual is hardly an option.

Forest, trees... There are problems one should automate but there are many problems where automating is not worth the effort. https://xkcd.com/1319/ https://xkcd.com/1205/

Part of the payoff of automation is not just time saved, but uniformity of results. Everybody makes errors when constructing reports by hand, and most of them are never even discovered, unless you start writing programs to check them.

Also, doing things quickly and easily can have all sorts of benefits, like allowing you to adjust to the unexpected.

Edit: Someone already said much the same thing. Oh well.

Re: Learning to code vs. learning to automate

#169

Post by mofosyne »

rumanator wrote: post #95
andrepd wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>4. If I successfully automate it, all of my coworkers lose their jobs. A failure of capitalism when less work and more productivity is a bad thing.

> A failure of capitalism when less work and more productivity is a bad thing. Do you believe buggy whip manufacturers should be entitled to their old job even today?

They may not be entitied to a job... but they certainly are entitled to not be screwed below the poverty line through no fault of their own, just because the the owner wanted an extra buck.

Hence the universal basic income.

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