Communications of the ACM

practice

time he did something manually, he documented the steps. That may not be code in the traditional sense, but writing the steps in a bullet list is similar to writing pseudocode before writing actual code. It doesn’t run on a literal computer, but you run the code in your head. You are the CPU.

Automation is putting process into code. A bullet list in a process document is code if it is treated that way.

The second time the successful engineer did something manually, he followed his own documentation. This might seem strange since he knew the process well enough to document it, but by following his own documentation, he found opportunities to improve it. He made correc-

LET ME TELL you about two systems administrators
I know. Both were overloaded, busy IT engineers.

Both had many repetitive tasks to do. Both wanted to automate these tasks. After observing these two people for a year, I noticed that one made a lot of progress, while the other one didn’t. It was not a matter of skill— both were very good software engineers. The difference was their approach, or mind-set.

I would say the successful one had a mindset of always thinking in terms of moving toward the goal of a better automated system. Imagine an analog gauge that points to the left when measuring that a process is completely manual but slides to the right as progress is made toward a fully autonomous system. The developer mindset is always intent on moving the needle to the right.

The less successful person didn’t write much code, and he had excellent reasons why: I’m too busy! The person who made the request can’t wait! I have 100 other things to do today! Nobody’s allocating time for me to write code!