Post B4Le1K6Xm0ZCjWKKA4 by darkling@mstdn.social
 (DIR) More posts by darkling@mstdn.social
 (DIR) Post #B4Le1K6Xm0ZCjWKKA4 by darkling@mstdn.social
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       @simontatham I'm a fan of the variant of "need a run-up", where you don't know what you're doing, but want to make sure that when you have to redo it, you redo the working steps the same way.The best way of doing this is to write down the steps. In a script. So when you do get it working, you have most of your automation already written.
       
 (DIR) Post #B4Le1KHt5pdnIhdNqK by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
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       @darklingI've had tasks that:- I know I'll need to do exactly 5 times- are complicated- have many unknown unknowns - many thngs could go wrong, but I don't know which ones- any of those unknown unknowns could do a lot of damageI don't automate those, since I can't do error handling for an error I can't anticipate.I write down what I'm doing, with commands, including a lot of sanity checks, and what to expect from an output.Then I repeat these steps by hand.@simontatham
       
 (DIR) Post #B4LeBr6nv3mBzQTFj6 by darkling@mstdn.social
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       @wolf480pl @simontatham If any damage isn't reversible, then absolutely. I've mostly used my pattern in things like new data-ingest pipelines, where you can keep the original upstream data, and just nuke the interim stuff and try again if it all goes wrong.