[butisaidsudo]

My wife is a genetic counsellor, and as part of her work she regular has to use this one formula to calculate the probability of this one genetic condition I can't quite recall.

Because of the complexity and the importance of getting it right, it took her around 10-15 minutes every time she needed to use it. She, and her colleagues, are pretty much luddites so a basic calculator was their only tool.

I spent 10 minutes writing the formula in javascript, dropping it an html file, and running a few test.

She absolutely loved it, and shared it with the rest of the staff. Apparently some counsellors at another clinic heard about it and requested it as well. Someone thanked me at her Christmas staff party.

In terms of effort to build vs. hours saved and end user appreciation, I don't think I'll ever top it.

[andrepd]

It probably boggles the mind of people like us, used to being power command-line users and automating our boring tasks with powerful tools, to hear stories like this.

[kbenson]

With the prevalence of office jobs that use computers, being a developer is sort of like being an engineer in the 1960's or before but having the ability to whip up designs for simple mechanical devices that you can build for very low time and money cost, and replicate for free. It's like being the inventor of the slap-chop except that it costs so little to get items out there, that people often just do it for free. I would love it if I was doing some annoying repetitive task like mincing garlic or onions and someone said "hey, I can make that easier. Give me an hour..."

[lioeters]

I like your description, it's one of things I love about software, how malleable it is for quickly building "devices", tools for my own use or a potentially large number of users.

About the last point you made, how it would be great if hardware/mechanical devices could be made more like software - a few years ago I heard about "micro factories" (forgot the exact term): 3D printers for small(er) scale manufacturing. It seemed promising that soon we could be writing software to manufacture devices/products at home, in a garage, local maker "lab". If you thought of an easier mechanism to mince garlic, you could whip up a prototype in a code editor and "print out" a working prototype (or production-level device)..