Post #2113499

2026-04-06 15:02 UTC

Assuming you set it up **perfectly** the first time, instead of it breaking for some reason six weeks later and then you spend _three hours_ figuring out/remembering how you set it up in the first place and another _two nights_ after work fixing it so it works as intended. Also your use case has changed, so it needs to be retooled to address the new situation. Other than that... worth it.

Replies (3)

@rockerface@lemmy.cafe 2026-04-06 15:18

> spend _three hours_ figuring out/remembering how you set it up in the first place I mean, you could also leave comments in your code, but that's just me

Open ##2113502
@elvith@feddit.org 2026-04-06 16:37

There's also a [relevant xkcd](https://xkcd.com/1319/) for that.

Open ##2113513
@CanadaPlus@futurology.today 2026-04-06 17:13

5 years is also a pretty arbitrary span to go with. You could smoothly discount future time savings instead, but then your *discounting curve* is arbitrary. The most rigorous way to go would be to set some kind of future goal, and then work your way backwards to find some kind of statistical description of the shortest path there, or else set some kind of future metric at a specific time and find the path that maximises it. This is pretty much how you design your investing portfolio, just with money instead of labour.

Open ##2113517