I've  been having to do a lot of very tedious work lately. Repetitive,
  stupid tasks. This sounds like it could be automated perfectly.

  However:

    -- I was forced to use software with no APIs or bad APIs.

    -- Even though the  tasks  were  repetitive,  there  was  a  lot  of
       "branching"  involved:  Sometimes  foo should happen if bar holds
       true, or baz should happen if bar and bam hold true, and so on.

  To automate my tasks, I would first have  had  to  familiarize  myself
  with  the various APIs. This alone takes some time. Then, I would have
  had to write a lengthy program with many, many "if" statements.  If  I
  were  to  make  an  error here it could have devastating effects, so I
  better pay a lot of attention and be very careful. This, again,  makes
  it more time consuming.

  At  the  end  of  the  day,  I  did  most  of the work by hand. I only
  automated what could  be  automated  easily.  I  felt  pretty  stupid.
  However, I was finished *a lot* earlier than I originally thought.

  Moral  of  the story: Automating things is great but don't forget that
  you first have to write the code. Running the  actual  code  might  be
  done in a few seconds, but the "pre-work" can be very, very expensive.

  Also,  don't  get  scared  by  large  amounts  of  manual  work. Don't
  underestimate how much work you can do -- just do it, don't waste time
  thinking "this is too much work to be done by hand".


                           ____________________


  On a similar topic.

  I  really  wish that more people would embrace the power of plain text
  files. I wish that people would remember  (or  realize)  that  a  file
  system on your hard drive is a powerful instrument.

  Instead,  our  modern  "IT  world"  is  cluttered  with  databases and
  frameworks and web applications. All in the name of "usability" --  so
  they  say.  In  reality,  many  developers  simply  don't know better.
  Others do, but they fear for their job.

  It makes me sad and angry. It's a waste. A waste  of  computing  power
  and,  more  importantly, my time. It makes my life more complicated. I
  have to do tasks that I wouldn't *need* to do  if  we  "fundamentally"
  changed how we process data.

  For  example, Git is a powerful tool and it works very well. I believe
  one key aspect is that its internal workings rely on a  rather  simple
  design.  Just  imagine  what Git would look like (and feel like) if it
  was a web application with a database backend. That application  would
  also  need  a  plugin  system because there is no shell that helps you
  build your own tools around Git. Most likely, the application would be
  written  in  Java  or -- if you're lucky -- Python, both would further
  boost its inefficency.

  Does that sound silly? Who on  earth  would  build  a  VCS  as  a  web
  application?  But  then  again, most "wiki software" out there is just
  that. And, uhm, just think about Dropbox or Google Drive for a second.

  But, of course, these days are over. Nobody wants to use text files or
  maybe  even  simpler  tools  anymore. People have different standards.
  I'm not sure why (I have many theories, though). In any case,  I  have
  little  hope  that this will change again. It's just over. Things will
  only get *more* complicated.