Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Agreed

There's a point where more automation does not mean things become easier.

Let's take the same dishwasher example. Of course it saves a lot of time for a family of four, for example. Pop it in and you're done.

But for example, for a single person, this makes much less sense. Because the time it takes for putting it in the dishwasher, waiting to fill the machine and running the cycle is longer than just washing the damn dishes.

No automation is "free". And overautomation causes problems as well.



Well, the wall-clock time may be longer, but the human time is much shorter. As long as you have one meal's worth of slack in the amount of crockery you have, the dishwasher wins by a country mile in the amount of effort expended.


Yes, but as I said, and the math changes for different automations, the time (and ease) vary

Automate dishwashing for a 10 party dinner: no brainer

Automate dishwashing for one plate, one fork and one knife. Not advantageous

Automate generating a manual report that takes 30min and needs to run everyday: no brainer also

Automate a report that needs one piece of data that's easy to get and needs to run once a month: does it really matter?




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: