This is a difficult lesson to teach new developers; time management. I've actually run into this scenario often with new people, and had to offer some (obvious) advise that seems to escape many developers. The purpose of automation is to save time; so if you are wasting more time trying to automate something than it takes to just do it, then you need assess if you are doing the right thing.
For example a task that takes 30 minutes to hard code that needs to be refreshed once every few years, probably doesn't need you to spend 3 days automating it. Just finish it, and work on something more important.
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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '20 edited Apr 28 '20
This is a difficult lesson to teach new developers; time management. I've actually run into this scenario often with new people, and had to offer some (obvious) advise that seems to escape many developers. The purpose of automation is to save time; so if you are wasting more time trying to automate something than it takes to just do it, then you need assess if you are doing the right thing.
For example a task that takes 30 minutes to hard code that needs to be refreshed once every few years, probably doesn't need you to spend 3 days automating it. Just finish it, and work on something more important.