this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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People often ask why I contribute to open source projects or otherwise work on building automated tooling. They see me spending hours to automate a task or fix a bug that take seconds to do or avoid manually, in a way that the original XKCD comic says won't pay off. The disconnect seems to be that the comic and those people only consider time it saves me, not time it saves the tens to thousands to millions of other people who will use the script or patch or whatever when I publish it. So, here's a version of xkcd.com/1205 updated for making decisions that benefit a thousand people instead of just one.

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[–] xantoxis@lemmy.world 21 points 9 months ago (5 children)

How many things does anyone do 50x a day, period? Apart from autonomic body functions I can't think of anything. I probably don't even stand up 50 times a day.

[–] ptrknvk@lemmy.world 25 points 9 months ago

Sending emails, opening files, checking the database. Those are quite mundane everyday tasks of every office clerk.

[–] SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works 17 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Copy, cut, paste, undo. Use those keyboard shortcuts and if you work with documents for a notable part of the day you will save a half day a year or so.

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 3 points 9 months ago

I know some people who still do that with the right click menu. Then again, they don’t really copy-paste stuff very often. Maybe only once a week or so.

[–] sparr@lemmy.world 15 points 9 months ago

I'm going to click the [-] thread collapse button on Lemmy 50 times in the next ten minutes.

[–] LazaroFilm@lemmy.world 11 points 9 months ago

Type ; in JS or C.

[–] knatsch@feddit.de 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I click the left mouse button more often each day, also when you work in a production facility you have a bunch of repetitive tasks, automating them is pretty much was humanity did in the last century.

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I click the left mouse button more often each day, also when you work in a production facility you have a bunch of repetitive tasks, automating them is pretty much was humanity did in the last century.

How can we shave a second of the time it takes for you to click the left mouse button?

[–] ABCDE@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] LinuxSBC@lemm.ee 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

When you press a button on this revolutionary machine, it will automatically left click for you!

[–] kurwa@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

Something we talk about at my job is being able to do stuff in our UI with less clicks, less is better.

[–] psud@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

My mouse seems to believe there is no use case for more than ten right clicks in a row, so it corrects them to left clicks. Sucks for minesweeper.