Ask HN: If you could automate one thing you do often at work, what would it be?

It's not fully automate, but I frequently find myself having to do a lot of one off shell tasks, which are not quite worth the effort of writing a bash script. While some command is running I would like to start enqueing the next command.

Technically I could write one command like this and go get a coffee:

cd dir1 && task1 && cd ../dir2 && task2 some arg && etc

But then the task would only start executing when I'm done typing all commands... I want it to start task1 right away and then tkae my time to enter the rest...

parliament32 · 6 years ago

Might be worth it for you to just get better at bash. Use background jobs and "wait":

    do.sh stuff &
    wait; do-other-stuff.sh -123 &
    wait; cd ../; do-something-else.sh

It'll run the first command, when it's done it'll move on to the next one, etc. Use "jobs" to see jobs. Further reading: https://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/x9644.html

johnsimer · 6 years ago

Just use tmux and split your pane

knguyen0105 · 6 years ago

I discovered ‘tsp’ last year and it worked great.

Riverheart · 6 years ago

How about run-parts?

We have many software programs that need to be run in sequence to transform a set of data from one form (on the order of tens to hundreds of GB) into a bunch of different output file formats. At some points the tools need to be run linearly, and at other points there are a few tools that need to be run in a branched fashion and then their outputs are combined in some complicated way using the next tool. Some of these tools take on the order of up to days to run, so an improper configuration due to human error loses time (pretty common given the complexity of work). Often the time lost is on the order of days.

These tools need to be configured in certain ways depending on the business needs.

Having a nice way to look at the dataflow as a whole, configure these tools on a global level within some framework, and be able to nicely distribute the work on our internal server farm would be worth a good bit of money to the company.

mickeyp · 6 years ago

This is a common problem and for one you'll find many different solutions.

I used Apache Airflow some years ago to do exactly this. It's pretty good. You build a workflow of tasks (in Python) and set a schedule of how often you want it run. It then runs these tasks on any number of machines that you run the Airflow worker on to orchestrate the running of whatever it is you are trying to do.

If a task fails it can notify you; and if you "miss" a run it can backfill it provided your toolchain understands the concept of time. Very useful for hourly/daily feeds that, if you miss one, the system can go back and retry it just for the slots it missed.

Comes with a nice UI, too.

arsenide · 6 years ago

I’m glancing at the documentation, and came across this line:

“Airflow is not a data streaming solution. Tasks do not move data from one to the other (though tasks can exchange metadata!)“

Many of our tools take on the order of 5-200gb of data and do either some transformation (which gets passed along to the next tool; similar size, possibly after another automated validation step) and/or validation (whereby this particular branch of workflow ceases).

The automated modules we have are self-contained; each task in our case is “data + config parameters in, data out”, then use “data out” as “data in” after choosing configuration parameters for the next step.

Would this still be a good usecase — am I misunderstanding what the above quote is about?

bubba1236 · 6 years ago

did u look at aws batch maybe

sheeeep86 · 6 years ago

lowdose · 6 years ago

Acquiring knowledge. Auto flash card question generation based on the things I read, listen and watch.

quickthrower2 · 6 years ago

Refactoring. I’m sure there could be more advanced refactoring available than rename and extract method.

protoweek · 6 years ago

Figure out all the things I need to read and summarise it for me... tab switching, reading, skimming take up a lot of my time

Many channels on slack + email threads + conversations on DMs

opportune · 6 years ago

heres a potentially easy one: create a tool that behaves exactly like outlook rules to the user but can be applied to gmail

I spend too much time looking at email and can’t seem to get the hang of the gmail labels system

davchana · 6 years ago

A possible solution is: coarsely label the incoming mail, or just label everything incoming if coarse label is not possible.

In Google Apps Script, fetch all mail with that label, process as wanted, like sending replies, moving, deleting; & then remove the label.

pks016 · 6 years ago

Not related to software.

I have to feed and give fresh & vitamin water to birds almost everyday. I wish, I could automate that somehow.

powerbottle · 6 years ago

Does code review and keeping up with code reviews count? I find that I can review PRs from multiple teams in a day and keeping up with them all of them is a lot of effort

If there was a bot that kept up with my work and just summarised all the progress since my reviews ... that would really be super useful and I’d likely do more reviews

robbya · 6 years ago

I believe GitHub will show a changes since last review view after you review code, new changes are added, and then you return. What software are you using?

Noumenon72 · 6 years ago

Looks like Bitbucket Server got this in version 4.11. I gotta ask my work to upgrade! https://www.atlassian.com/blog/bitbucket/new-features-bitbuc...

Jefro118 · 6 years ago

This might be helpful?: https://pullpanda.com/