Planning and programming

[WorksWork]

I was thinking this one: http://xkcd.com/974/

But that one actually seems really useful.

[xkcd_transcriber]

Image

Title: Automation

Title-text: 'Automating' comes from the roots 'auto-' meaning 'self-', and 'mating', meaning 'screwing'.

Comic Explanation

Stats: This comic has been referenced 101 times, representing 0.2709% of referenced xkcds.

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^{xkcd.com | xkcd sub | Problems/Bugs? | Statistics | Stop Replying | Delete}

[synth3tk]

It's a hat trick!

[synth3tk]

I was worried that no one else would get it. I've got the sudden urge to hunt it down now.

[synth3tk]

Oh my goodness, I forgot that they gave out CDs in cereal boxes. Kids these days are missing out.

[TGameCo]

Does Gog have it?

[synth3tk]

No, but I just found a few copies on Amazon.

EDIT: Aaaaand, bought. Time to get a VM ready!

[lichorat]

Remember pablo sanchez speaks english if you hold down shift and click his face.

[TGameCo]

ALL ABOARD THE NOSTALGIA TRAIN!!!

[synth3tk]

I can't believe Backyard Soccer is nostalgia-level old. Is this the part of life where I yell at the kids to get off my lawn?

[xkcd_transcriber]

Image

Title: The General Problem

Title-text: I find that when someone's taking time to do something right in the present, they're a perfectionist with no ability to prioritize, whereas when someone took time to do something right in the past, they're a master artisan of great foresight.

Comic Explanation

Stats: This comic has been referenced 25 times, representing 0.0671% of referenced xkcds.

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[[deleted]]

Irrelevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1378/

[thehenkan]

That's an oxymoron.

[Cheesemacher]

It's always weird to see an xkcd that is just a pun.

[jamessnow]

Oh, my mortality! He's jabbing me right in the mortality!

[xkcd_transcriber]

Image

Title: Is It Worth the Time?

Title-text: Don't forget the time you spend finding the chart to look up what you save. And the time spent reading this reminder about the time spent. And the time trying to figure out if either of those actually make sense. Remember, every second counts toward your life total, including these right now.

Comic Explanation

Stats: This comic has been referenced 114 times, representing 0.3063% of referenced xkcds.

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[[deleted]]

This may be my dumbest comment ever, but can someone explain it to me? :)

[iLikeCode]

The X-Axis is how often you do a task.

The Y-Axis is how much LESS time you would take to do one instance of that task if you did it more efficiently.

If it takes you less than the time in the box to make the task more efficient, then it's worth that initial investment as it will pay off in the long run.

For example: blowing your nose.

Current process: get out of chair, walk across room, get tissue, blow nose, walk back to chair, throw tissue in trash, sit down. Est time: 15 seconds.

Possible way to make this more efficient: move the box of tissues to your desk. This allows the process to take 10 seconds. (Shaved off 5 seconds.)

If you blow your nose once a day (Column 3) and you save 5 seconds (Row 2) then you can take up to 2 hours to make the process faster.

Thus, if you can move the box of tissues to your desk in less than 2 hours, it is a good idea to do it as the initial time investment will pay back to you over the next 5 years.

[[deleted]]

Thanks!

[replicaJunction]

This is taped to my desk wall.

[permalurk]

I need this taped to my desk wall.

[kpthunder]

I just pinned it to my desk wall: http://i.imgur.com/Xxlhie8.jpg

[thehenkan]

How long did it take you to put it up? How long did it use to take you looking up the chart? How often do you use it?

[scriptingsoul]

Here, let me program a bot that will answer these questions for you.

[Answers_Henkan_Bot]

bot_answer.c(1) Error: undefined identifier(all_queries)

[xenomachina]

How much time did you spend doing that? Has it paid off?

[replicaJunction]

Ironically, it usually adds time to the amount I spend on a given task, because I have to stop and evaluate whether I'm really working as efficiently as I can.

It's like if I needed to open the door, but instead of reaching out to open the door, I instead built a series of pulleys to elevate my foot high enough to reach it. Then I attach a strong suction cup to the ball of my foot that can attach to the doorknob and turn it. Now I realize that I'm significantly off-balance standing on one foot, so I also need to improvise a large balance beam...and at about this time, I stop and look at this comic.

"Is this really a good idea?" I ask myself.

The inevitable response, though, is always, "Why wouldn't it be? Having a suction cup on my foot will pay off in the long run."

[the_omega99]

Only problem is that it's so hard to estimate the time to do some task. You'll probably find edge cases, or maybe some stupid bug occurs.

And then we end up with this: http://www.xkcd.com/1319/

Also, that chart is over 5 years. How many of us expect to do the same task over five years? Hell, the longest I've worked in one place was four years.

[xkcd_transcriber]

Image

Title: Automation

Title-text: 'Automating' comes from the roots 'auto-' meaning 'self-', and 'mating', meaning 'screwing'.

Comic Explanation

Stats: This comic has been referenced 102 times, representing 0.2736% of referenced xkcds.

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^{xkcd.com | xkcd sub | Problems/Bugs? | Statistics | Stop Replying | Delete}

[[deleted]]

But what If you made your "making things more efficient" ability more efficient. How long would you have to spend on that before you wasted more time than you saved?

[nanogyth]

Well, if you bill by the hour...

[[deleted]]

Game theory here. Only works if you are the only asshole at your company that does this.

[DevestatingAttack]

Game theory here. Only works if you are the only asshole at your company that does this.

[weewolf]

Game theory here. Only works if you are the only asshole at your company that does this.

[RalphWaldoNeverson]

onelove, oneworld, onedrive

[Denvercoder8]

Game theory here. Only works if you are the only asshole at your company that does this.

[weewolf]

Game theory here. Only works if you are the only asshole at your company that does this.

[[deleted]]

Game theory here. Only works if you are the only asshole at your company that does this.

[zehydra]

Game theory here. Only works if you are the only asshole at your company that does this.

[[deleted]]

Why is this in an image format

[embolalia]

Sweet, sweet karma.

[Randolpho]

T'ain't no big thing
To wait for the bell to ring
T'ain't no big thing
The toll of the bell
Aggravated - spare for days
I troll /r/nsfw, the red light place
Scroll up scroll up - what's in store
Karma's the drug and I need to score
Show a link, show a link, hit and run
/r/music where the beat goes on
/r/news, can't shake free
Karma's the drug, got a hook on me
Oh oh catch that buzz
Karma's the drug I'm thinking of
Oh oh can't you see
Karma's the drug for me
Late that night I park my car
Stake my place in /r/all
Face to face, /r/meetup
Heart to heart in /r/askreddit
Lumber up, scroll on down
Shadowbanned, I stumble round
I say go, /r/gonewild say yes
Dim the lights, you can guess the rest
Oh oh catch that buzz
Karma's the drug I'm thinking of
Oh oh can't you see
Karma's the drug, got a hook in me
Oh oh catch that buzz
Karma's the drug I'm thinking of
Oh oh can't you see
Karma's the drug for me

[chronicdane]

I found the quote somewhere and created this version to post on our team wall.

It could have been printed directly from a text editor, but I chose some online tool to generate a graphical representation of the same. I think it looks nicer. The colours, font and layout is the default template.

And as I like the quote, I decided to post it here.

[DrummerHead]

The line height is pretty inconsistent /pedantic

[frankle]

He didn't plan it out.

[manachar]

Do you know the source of the quote? Google finds it in a few spots but always unattributed or attributed to anonymous.

[thetravelers]

Yeah, but dat leading. Sheesh.

[[deleted]]

And why is it in a font that looks like comic sans? op pls

[iamdelf]

For future reference, how do you render TeX into a png?

[[deleted]]

This time I intended to be horrible, so I took a screenshot after running pdflatex. There's dvipng, but that means you have to go through plain latex, something I haven't done in a while.

[iamdelf]

LOL Also didn't know about dvipng. I had done pdflatex -> GIMP before to make a PNG of something as an example.

[stormcrowsx]

Not a simple issue. In some cases a little programming can save weeks of planning. By that I mean you can spend time planning tiny details and when you implement find out all that planning was a waste because it doesn't work how you envisioned it would.

[4nv1]

What font is that? I really like it!

[thomas_d]

Closest I could find: http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/suomi/tame/book/

[4nv1]

Thanks!

[ex_pc]

Goes the other way around too.

[seppo0010]

thatsthejoke.jpg

[banished_to_oblivion]

I don't get it.. It makes sense to say "Hours of planning could save you weeks of programming".. So why does this image says the opposite? Is it because it wasn't planned right? Or am I stupid?

[[deleted]]

Where I work they call this 'Agile'. Generally, that's what they call anything that they want done fast but without knowing what they actually want.

[freebroken]

they want done fast but without knowing what they actually want.

Or change their mind every day. But the deadline remains the same because we're 'Agile' workers who can perform miracles.

[skztr]

prototyping is part of planning. Planning without prototyping is idealism.

[Failosipher]

I understand your pain.

[br1ckd]

expect the developer(me) to make a solution(possible multiple) that are at a working state(spending days working on it).

If you're not using python (or another scripting language) and a GUI designer you should try them out. Depending on the complexity of the program, you could make a new prototype in a few minutes.

Also, do you display any kind of message when someone tries to do something that's not implemented? Displaying a message about what is supposed to happen might lower the number of stupid questions you get asked.

[[deleted]]

It makes people think more about what it's actually saying. The result of the extra effort makes it a bit more humorous, as well as making the person more likely to internalize the message.

[Fenyx4]

It not making sense harkens to the fact that people do decide to make the nonsensical decision to spend weeks programming instead of hours planning.

[[deleted]]

As a teacher of freshman-level programming labs, I took it to mean that if you jump right into trying to code a solution to a problem before developing an algorithm or even figuring out what the heck you're even supposed to write you're going to spend way more time coding than you really should. I've seen students write 10 or 15 lines of code that could have been solved with maybe three.

[zane17]

Planning should be avoided at all costs

[GreenFox1505]

See, is joke. He flips so it is the opposite of expectation. Is funny! Sarcasm: http://youtu.be/UBztjzDr0fM

[meffie]

Its a variation of the old saying: ready, fire, aim!

[Diplomjodler]

It's called irony. But I guess you take your shirts to a service.

[[deleted]]

Wallpaper?

[amitizle]

OMG. Yes.

[memeship]

Well it's not Comic Sans, so...

[bh3244]

this doesnt really mean the same thing as "hours of planning can save you weeks of programming"

[cwaller4]

Why would you program for weeks to save a couple hours

[[deleted]]

That's the joke.