1 Thing Programmers Should Do More Often

This past week I found myself with a task of creating pages on this site for all the Mobile Apps that have been developed by Halotis Inc. At the same time I wanted to get the marketing material organized for all of those apps in a consistent directory structure.

Which lead me to something I believe more programmers should do more often. Write Automation Scripts. Rather than manually create the directory structure for 23 different Apps and find all those apps in the App Store to get their descriptions and screenshots. I was able to write a script to create the directory structure, search iTunes, pull out relevant information, and download all the screenshots.

It’s what I love most about Python. It becomes so easy to find a decent library for any public API, and quickly whip up a command line utility to automate what would otherwise be a tedious task.

Getting good at writing these sorts of automated scripts is a differentiator. After a while of writing them, you build up a library of neat scripts that can help you day to day to get more done in less time.

A script, once written, becomes an asset to be possibly used again and again in the future.