Some of the most important best practices in software engineering deal with automation; automated builds, automated testing, automated backups etc. It seems that developers are obsessed with automation, but why? Is it because they are lazy? I think there is something to that (and that’s a good thing, laziness being one of the Three Programmer Virtues), but I think that the main reason is safety. Automated processes have fewer errors.
Computers are really good at certain things, and one of them is doing the same task over and over again without variation. If your build process is ten steps long, and automated version will ALWAYS perform those ten steps. It will never forget a step and cause error down the line, and if one of the steps fails for any reason, it will stop and hopefully inform someone.
Because of this, I feel that every developer should be familiar with writing scripts. They can be shell scripts, Perl, Ruby or whatever. They just need to know how to create scripts for turning error prone, slow and tedious manuals processes into fast, easy and error free automated processes. In fact, I would feel nervous about hiring a developer that either didn’t know how, or feel the need to created automated scripts from time to time.
I also have found that this rule of automation is and should be applied to process outside of software engineering. Rules to filter your email are an example of this. The power of automation is what makes macros (properly used) in Microsoft Office and the Automator tool on OS X such important tools. With these tools the average user could, with a little time, automated those painful tasks, saving themselves time and preventing errors.
I will be from time to time providing examples of things I have automated in my own work and of how you can automated common painful tasks that every one seems to deal with. Keep an eye out for it!
