[victormours]

This idea is great. You could even argue that these scripts actually do something: they allow storing and updating the state of a process. By having these scripts run in a shell rather than in your head, the current state is stored in a machine, not in an unreliable human brain.

[empath75]

also they allow you to gradually script stuff as you figure it out.

[lioeters]

That looks to be a big advantage of scripts like this, they allow the gradual automation of processes.

I realized that I've written scripts that are "executable checklists", but didn't see it as a design pattern until reading this article. Typically such a script starts out as fully manual (do this, do that next, copy here, paste there..) then I replace steps as actual code, where I can, while some steps remain manual if needed.

Great use of such checklist scripts is on-boarding collaborators or new team members in a project.

Also, as grandparent comment pointed out, they reduce cognitive load by keeping the state of a process outside the head.

[rakoo]

This should be read in conjunction with this other great article about how to gradually automate your process: https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3197520

[mturmon]

This is a great article, providing even more context for why this stepwise automation is smart.

[jonathanpoulter]

this seems like the real magic here. The author states at the start, automating all of the steps of something can be daunting. But this script can incrementally become a do everything script.