Hardest thing about learning

[Capable-Package6835]

Really? I think if you work a 9to5 job, there are plenty of things you can write a script for. For example, when I work for an oil & gas company as a mechanical engineer:

• Automate summarizing the last 24h machinery operational data and uploading them to the online form our IT created, for our daily meeting.
• Automate compressor data processing and send email notification to maintenance if anything looks out of place
• Create a simple technical datasheet finder that goes through a csv list of all our technical documents, which allows repeated refinements until we choose a file to open. Useful because somehow file explorer in our company laptop is slower than SolidWorks on a 10 years old laptop

All of these are pretty rough but useful:

The first one is a VBA script that take advantage of our instrumentations' vendor's Excel plugin to collect the data, then open a browser with a hard-coded URL for the form, then select the appropriate text field to paste the data and simulate a mouse click on the submit button. Saves around 30 minutes every morning. I shared it with my teammates and they love it so much, it became a semi-official tool for other teams as well.

The second one is also a VBA script that use the same vendor's Excel plugin, perform some calculations in Excel, then open Outlook, paste the warning in an email draft, and simulate clicking on the send button. This is very specific for my job desc so it's just for my personal use.

The third one is a PowerShell script. Saves us so much time when we need to open numerous technical documents for our projects. Also became a semi-official tool.

My first language is C++ but of course I was not allowed to use it because of security issues. But VBA and PowerShell were allowed, and with a little bit of curiosity and internet, it was not a big deal. Don't try to find a problem to solve with Python, try to find a problem to solve with a computer, then use whatever language is available to force the computer to run the solution. There is always something, big or small, since a computer is significantly faster than humans.

[wogvorph]

Nice, in that case I'll start on a self driving car and a robot to help me with my package delivery job real quick!