Xkcd 1319 Memes

The eternal developer dilemma: spend several hours automating a task that would take 5 minutes to do manually. Sure, the automation will save time... eventually... after the 84th run... in theory. But who's counting? Certainly not the developer crawling through the desert of inefficiency while ignoring the obvious oasis of just doing the damn thing.

The ultimate programmer flex: spending 10 days to automate a 10-minute task. It's not about efficiency—it's about sending a message to that repetitive task that dared to exist in your workflow. Sure, you could've saved 9 days, 23 hours, and 50 minutes of your life, but at what cost? Your dignity? The satisfaction of writing a script that will save you approximately 3 minutes per year for the next decade? The smug smile says it all: "Yes, I could've just done the task 1,440 times in the same timeframe, but my bash script is elegant ."