[Wronnay]

I think many devs have that feeling...

But often simple things have a very big effect - in my first job I made some simple scripts which imported data from machines into an ERP System.

I also made some bigger projects with feature rich GUIs at my first job.

The simple scripts probably sill import data every workday and automate a task previously made by humans since multiple years, some of the GUIs weren't even used daily before I left that job...

So I feel like the simple scripts will be there for a long time and save many work hours while some of the feature rich GUIs probably weren't necessary...

[snarfy]

My most used program was a 7 byte .COM I wrote with debug.exe. It made the machine reboot. It took about 15 seconds to write. A friend who worked at the college ended up using it in their scripts. They had a way to do it before but it wasn't as reliable as my little program. That college's infrastructure was used as a model for the rest of the district and so my little program spread to the other colleges.

[oogali]

jmp f000:e05b

Between fiddling with debug.exe and discovering that fixed address, that put me on the path to demystifying technology (or at least understanding everything is approachable).

[jpalawaga]

I feel like everyone has an ah-ha moment when software's facade of magic gives way to a genuine feeling that nothing in software is inunderstandable.

I was helping my brother through some CS classes, and he had to use some sort of graphics library, and things just weren't clicking. I opened the source of the graphics library so he could see what was going on under the hood and he was like "whoa... It's all just... Regular code..."

Demystifying indeed.

[ElFitz]

I remember when a friend and I, both with barely any experience at all, tried building our first SaaS.

We went crazy over access control, roles, etc, wondering how operating systems and databases did it, driving ourselves mad over how to implement it at the lowest possible levels so the rest of the stack couldn’t possibly go around it…

We were pretty certain there was some highly complex dark magic behind it all.

A few years later, I worked on a project where we built a SaaS MVP for a client, with access control.

Turns out most people apparently consider ABAC overkill and will go with a few simple if statements if they can afford to.

[nuclearnice3]

I showed a friend telnet yahoo port 80 GET.

"wait. it's .. just ... text!"

[D13Fd]

It’s crazy how much time little scripts can save.

10 years ago at my current job I created a script to automate the job of checking a certain website for new data each day. It used to be done by a person who would spend maybe 20-30 minutes checking the site and circulating the info each day. Others would also check the site on their own periodically for faster updates.

The script just checks the site multiple times a day and circulates the results.

Over the course of 10 years, I’d guess that my little script I wrote in maybe 5-10 hours (including some tweaks over time as the site format changed) probably saved in the ballpark of half a million dollars in time spent, based on billing rates.

[flakiness]

Yeah, this happens even within a side project. Smaller trivial ones tend to be found useful, while bigger ambitious one tend to ending up disappointing, even if completed.

At work, giving a spot-time quick help often feels more helpful than pushing through a "proper" project task.

I suspect this is because large part of the "work" project is more like a speculative investment than something obviously useful. That is probably OK because finding large-enough-obviously-useful-things is hard. What we tend to overlook is that finding a tiny-but-obviously-useful-thing isn't as hard as it looks. It's just hard to earn enough from it.

[amelius]

Ok, but then you should also ask: how much of that is my work and would someone else have written the same simple scripts? Perhaps the main value is in the existence of these ERP systems.

From that p.o.v. your feature rich GUIs may be your biggest contribution to society, because that's really work based on your decisions.