Little Things, Big Wins

In a post about why bloggers should consider writing about little things (that is worth a full read), Shubham Jain starts off by expanding on speculation that Stack Overflow, a programming Q&A site, has contributed to billions of dollars' worth of productivity:

Quite rightly so. Imagine, the [number] of people that didn't have to go through (maybe lousy) documentation, and long threads to seek solution for their problems. RTFM, many of programmers would be quick to point out but even the simplest questions, like, "How to read a whole file in python?", [or] "How to kill a process with its name?" must have saved thousands of programmers' time. Thanks to rookies who didn't feel embarrassed in asking them, that even experienced programmers can enjoy fruits of their answers.

Amen. I myself have benefited greatly from being able to create time-saving scripts for such things as following news, making certain kinds of edits instantly, and even job hunting ahead of a move, by using sites like this to greatly enhance the value of my limited programming experience.

What I really like about this is that it dovetails with my general approach to using computers in my work (search "writing-related"), where my objective is to be able to continually and permanently improve my efficiency any time I see the need.

-- CAV