zlacker

That made me remember that one time many years ago, when I had a friend who literally called me a wizard.. He was working as a shift manager at a call center, and one of his most difficult tasks he kept ranting about was scheduling employees, who were not the most consistent bunch, and had varied skillset, yet he had to meet very strict support availability requirements.

He kept ranting about what a b*tch of a problem that was, every time we went out drinking, and one day, something got into me, and thought there must be some software that can help with this.

Surely there was, and I set up a server with an online web UI where every employee could put in when they were able to work, and the software figured out how to assign timeslots to cover requirements.

I thought it was a nice exercise for me in learning to admininster a linux server, but when I showed it to my friend, he looked me in the eye and told me I a saved him a day of work every week, and called me a wizard :D

It occured to me, how naturally part of the programming profession is to make things in fixed amounts of time, that turn difficult and time consuming tasks a human needed to do into something that essentially just happens on its own.