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by mhh__ 1870 days ago
What? I want to make the washing machine starting drying after a specific amount of time after the wash stage has finished.

And guess what mr programmer, they didn't bother letting me do that with the front panel...

1 comments

Most (all?) washing machines have a delayed start.

Why would you want your clothes to sit wet, collecting mold, before the drying begins?

See, part of being a good programmer is figuring out a solution using the tools you have. Which includes figuring out how existing machines address your issues without requesting they come with a fully programmable API and wi-fi, just so you can delay the drying cycle.

I get the best drying if the machine washes, drains for a bit, then starts drying after that.

If I were to do this it would take 4 trips to the washing machine because they didn't think to make it tick over from even washing to drying.

What we've learned here is you need to buy a new washing machine, or maybe before that, read carefully the manual of the one you have.

Thinking you can dry your clothes better than the people who engineered the entire machine and wrote its programs is honestly cracking me up. Do you think the vendors were like "you know what, we don't need this washing machine to dry well".

Even more, what kind of a marketing campaign would such a scriptable machine even have?

"Our washing machine dries really poorly, but we hope every stay at home mom can script it to dry better, so we included a web server and a REST API with it".

They'll go bankrupt, man.

Well they decided not to have any modes that automatically dry after washing at all so I'm going with yes.

And thanks, I'll just spend this months rent on a new washing machine.

Well if you want it to be scriptable, you might need to spend three month's rent on a new washing machine.

And yeah, uhmm... most washing machines can run drying after washing. You just took your specific model's issue, and decided to generalize it to "must be scriptable". Which is really a giant leap to make. To recap:

1. Your specific model can't dry after washing.

2. Your specific model can't be scripted either.

3. Other models can dry after washing.

4. Other models have no scripting.

Ergo whatever you do, you're buying a new washing machine. And your problem doesn't require scripting.

Why? If it didn't belong to my landlord I could've made it scriptable in a few hours with one of a litany of wifi-enabled chips I have on my desk.

I'm a professional programming language implementer why can't I use those skills to do as I please?

Does it not have a spin cycle? After that runs on mine there's nothing left to drain.

Edit: oh no apparently it's a questionably maintained communal laundry room unit, I'm so sorry