{"id":65,"date":"2011-04-03T12:07:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-03T12:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/lisa\/post\/2011\/04\/03\/Manual-processes-can-be-better.aspx"},"modified":"2011-04-03T12:07:00","modified_gmt":"2011-04-03T12:07:00","slug":"manual-processes-can-be-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacefold.com\/lisa\/2011\/04\/03\/manual-processes-can-be-better\/","title":{"rendered":"Manual processes can be better"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thomas Dolby didn’t use any auto-tune on Oceanea<\/a>.  As you’ll find out if you follow the link in the last sentence, however, he does go in and electronically re-tune individual syllables wherever and whenever he feels like it.<\/p>\n

Well, of course he does it “electronically”.  He’s Thomas Dolby<\/strong>, for the love of mike.  How else would he do it?  (Come to think of it how else would anybody re-tune a syllable? I haven’t a clue.) <\/p>\n

In the music world, a lot of people think of auto-tune (pitch-correction software) as a way of cheating.  If your voice is not exactly true on a note, you can let the engineers fix it… but it’s not the same as having a great voice.<\/p>\n

While software developers often have a lot in common with musicians, in this case they often take the opposite view, especially in the enterprise-class software world:<\/p>\n

Automating every phase of the process (from class generation, to code review, to build-and-deploy, and beyond) is the goal.  If you haven’t automated something, you should be figuring out how to fix that hole in your process.<\/p>\n

Automation = time saved = overall productivity.  Sure, it takes time and effort to figure out, build, and get used to an automated process… but if you really care<\/strong>, you’ll put in that time and effort, because the result will be better.<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ve made that same argument myself, numerous times, in numerous scenarios.  But I think we need to take a note from Thomas Dolby here. <\/p>\n

He’s not using a manual process because he doesn’t care.  He’s using a manual process because he cares that much<\/strong>. He can do better, by hand, than he can do using auto-tune.<\/p>\n

And, sometimes, we can do better too.   Sometimes we use a manual method because we think we can do better than the automated tools<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I suppose I should add “… and when that happens, we don’t care how long it takes to do better.”  Well, okay.<\/p>\n

Time saved != productivity<\/strong>, except in the grossest sense.  Productivity<\/strong>, by the way, != excellence<\/strong>.  Productivity is only one component of excellence.<\/p>\n

I can hear the obvious objection…<\/p>\n

“What you’re talking about won’t scale, Lisa”. <\/h2>\n

You know what?  Sometimes, scaling has nothing to do with excellence either.  When that happens, scaling really is<\/strong> something I don’t care about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas Dolby didn’t use any auto-tune on Oceanea.  As you’ll find out if you follow the link in the last sentence, however, he does go in and electronically re-tune individual syllables wherever and whenever he feels like it. Well, of course he does it “electronically”.  He’s Thomas Dolby, for the love of mike.  How elseRead more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-techspeak","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacefold.com\/lisa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacefold.com\/lisa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacefold.com\/lisa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacefold.com\/lisa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacefold.com\/lisa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spacefold.com\/lisa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacefold.com\/lisa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacefold.com\/lisa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacefold.com\/lisa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}