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