

Don't Automate Technical Administrivia in a Startup - ailon
http://devblog.ailon.org/devblog/post/2011/08/12/Done28099t-Automate-a-Startup.aspx

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zdw
I disagree, in part. Automation has another huge benefit - avoiding human
error.

Any time you do math, automate. There are great business-focused tools out
there ranging from spreadsheets to CLI stuff like bc, ledger, or R.

Also, automating forces you think through the business process in an
analytical way. This will be very helpful if you need to refactor your process
in the future.

What I'd argue for is writing a few small tools that do the mechanical, easy
to screw up portions of the job (the math, any complex manipulations) and then
reevaluate automation as needed.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Also, anything that failing to do will cause problems should be automated. If
failure to roll your logs could cause hard drive space to fill crashing your
server, it is a strong candidate for automation.

I do agree that any code that gets written should be decided based on business
needs and not some sense of alphageekdom.

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mise
There's certainly a plus side to doing administrivia, if it can provide you
with implicit feedback in how your doing.

With your logs, if you fully automated everything, you might not spot a
problem with the server that you otherwise may not have noticed for weeks.

Let's say you have one task to complete upon each signup to your product - at
least you get a real sense of the rate of signups.

(Although in discussing these thing I get the feeling of being pedantic, as I
don't know how important they really are - a feeling I get a lot while reading
HN.)

~~~
francoisdevlin
Of course, it makes sense to know your tool chain as well. This is a problem
that could have been solved in 5 minutes with log rotate. Know your tools!

~~~
ailon
It's not a web server log.

~~~
count
logrotate will work with any text file.

~~~
ailon
It's not a text file and it's not the point. The specific task doesn't matter.
And even if someone spent 6 hours only because he/she didn't know of some tool
that might accomplish the task faster it's still 6 hours :)

