undefined | Better HN

0 pointsegypturnash12y ago0 comments

Code can also stop manual errors from creeping in.

This spring, I put together a graphic novel. When I was creating the list of source files to drop into InDesign's batch processor (a tedious task that involved full file system paths to a bunch of sequentially numbered files), I left one out. I managed to miss the forest for the trees when proofing, and didn't realize I'd made this mistake until I was sitting down to relax and enjoy reading the advance copy. With 399 more sitting on a loading dock waiting to be shipped to me.

I had to do a new print run; this cost me about $6000, which pretty much puts the Kickstarter for this volume in the red.

I also wrote a simple little script that I can point at a directory full of files, and get a CSV of everything in it to feed to InDesign. I will not be making this particular mistake again on a larger project. There will be other ones, I'm sure. And I'll try to find ways to automate stuff I can, and improve my proof reading process as well.

You are going to make mistakes. By hand, and in creating automated systems. This is a fact of life.

0 comments

1 comments · 1 top-level

doorhammer12y ago

The thing I like about making automated mistakes is that when I fix that mistake it usually doesn't happen again.

I also wonder about the percent of mistakes made.

A long time back I made some scripts to bulk load new employees into our associate management software. Before that it took an admin loading them in one at a time. The admin could probably get one employee entered, give or take, per minute, given network latency. The script had delays and such to not slam the network, but ran in the background. My first version got a field wrong for 90 or so employees, but I just had to do some small modification and it went back and fixed them all.

Basically, I made 90 or so mistakes, but managed to make the mistake and fix it in a tenth the time it took to manually enter all of them, and then that mistake was never made again.

I guess a lot of it depends on how critical correctness is straight out of the gate (like in your case). For our purposes, it was fine.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse