编程与软件工程blog.danslimmon.com
无为脚本：渐进自动化的关键（2019）
Do-nothing scripting: the key to gradual automation (2019)
2019 — 2025，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
这篇 2019 年的文章提出“什么都不做的脚本”（do-nothing scripting）：把手动流程写成脚本，每一步只打印说明并等待人工确认执行。这样流程状态由脚本而非人脑保存，之后可以逐步把个别步骤替换为自动化，实现从手工清单到全自动的平滑过渡。
为什么经久不衰：它把“写文档”和“写自动化”之间的鸿沟变成一条渐进路径，任何团队都能立刻上手，因此多年后仍被反复推荐。
HN 评论精选
方法本身有效，但“do nothing”这个名字会招来误解，推广时要低调。
我在 HN 上看到这篇文章后实践过，确实帮到了几个手动流程。但教训是：我在会议里直接叫它们“do nothing scripts”，结果被同事嘲笑没写全自动版本，也引起了领导的注意。“do nothing”作为描述很清楚，作为品牌名却很糟糕。现在我仍然写这类脚本，只是不再主动宣传，等同事自己参与改进后才公开。
sovietmudkipz查看英文原文
I did this after seeing this before on HN. There were a few processes that were manual that benefitted from the technique in the article. Learn from my folly: I even called them “do nothing scripts,” referencing this article. However; I was judged by peers for not writing the full automation versions as they didn’t appreciate the idea of gradual automation (programmer hubris?). Saying “do nothing scripts” in meetings did catch the awkward attention of leadership. As a description, “do nothing” communicates a lot. As a brand, “do nothing” can use some improvements. My short prescription of turning “do nothings” into “do some things” into “do all the things” didn’t help. We had some new people join the team and they had fun turning the do nothing scripts into a document. * Sigh * I still build these type of process description scripts still. I usually don’t advertise them to peers until they do some of the things nowadays.
阻碍自动化的往往不是技术，而是组织文化。
我在企业 IT 的经历让我确信：即使整个发布流程能自动化成按一个红色大按钮（撤销发布也是另一个按钮），组织文化上还是会把“按这个按钮”变成一场需要十二个人参与六小时的仪式。
phaedrus查看英文原文
My experience in corporate IT convinced me that even if an entire release could be automated down to a single press of a giant red button (and even if undoing the release could be another, single button), then culturally our organization would still figure out a way to turn the pressing of that button into a six hour ordeal requiring the participation of twelve people.
可以把“人工步骤”抽象成 wish 函数，用处理器栈实现逐步自动化。
这个思想可以推广成一个编程原语：一个神奇的 wish 函数，传入字符串描述就能实现任何事，比如 wish('copy these files to this host', files, host)。wish 实际上由人类完成；之后想自动化某类 wish 时，可以像异常处理器一样注册一个拦截处理器，只自动化部分请求，其余继续转发给人。
catern查看英文原文
The idea here can be generalized to a primitive programming construct: The magic function "wish", which can do anything you want, just give it a string description. For example: wish('copy these files to this host', files, host) You can augment this further by allowing the program to specify a return type from the wish, and magically the wish will produce the type you want. So for example: data = wish(Path, 'the path of the data files I need') Of course, the wish is actually implemented by sending a request to some human user. In my "wish" library for Python http://rsyscall.org/wish/ you can have a stack of handlers for wishes, just like exception handlers. If later you want to automate some wish, you can specify a handler which intercepts certain wishes and forwards the other ones on (by wishing again, just like an exception handler can re-raise).
实践中可以做成“可执行文档”，形式比名字更重要。
我们公司用这个方法，用 bash 写，叫“可执行文档”。文件里几乎没有逻辑和变量，甚至故意用 .txt 后缀，提醒大家这首先是一份操作说明，只是碰巧是合法的 bash 脚本。有时还会插入一行“使用前请先阅读理解”然后 exit 1。
dusted查看英文原文
We use this at my place, though in bash, and we call it executable documentation. Stuff like: NAME="$1" # Create directory for the code mkdir "$NAME" # Checkout the source cd $NAME && git something # and so on Sometimes with an echo "You need to read and understand this before just using it"; exit 1 thrown in somewhere for good measure. These files will have no logic, and make very little use of variables. They will also have a .txt filename to ensure that people understand, that first of all, this is a set of instructions for how to do something, which just so happens to be a valid bash script.
核心价值在于把流程状态从人脑转移到机器。
这个想法很棒，甚至可以说这些脚本其实做了事：它们保存并更新流程的状态。让脚本在 shell 里运行而不是在脑子里，当前进度就存在机器上，而不是不可靠的人脑里。
victormours查看英文原文
This idea is great. You could even argue that these scripts actually do something: they allow storing and updating the state of a process. By having these scripts run in a shell rather than in your head, the current state is stored in a machine, not in an unreliable human brain.
文章的面向对象写法是多余的，普通函数更清晰。
我不明白这里为什么需要类。与其用一堆 Step 类加 context 对象，不如直接用函数列表，甚至手动传参一行行调用。这样数据流向一目了然，代码更短；在函数里修改传入的 context 本质上就是“多绕几步的全局变量”。
sullyj3查看英文原文
Side note: - I don't understand why classes are needed here. instead of procedure = [ CreateSSHKeypairStep(), GitCommitStep(), WaitForBuildStep(), RetrieveUserEmailStep(), SendPrivateKeyStep(), ] for step in procedure: step.run(context) Why not make them functions instead of classes. The URLs can be locals instead of class variables and the context argument becomes an argument to the function rather than a run method. procedure = [ createSSHKeypairStep, gitCommitStep, waitForBuildStep, retrieveUserEmailStep, sendPrivateKeyStep, ] for step in procedure: step(context) The OO is just gratuitous. Personally I probably wouldn't even bother with the for loop/context and would just pass the data that's actually needed by each function into it manually. createSSHKeypairStep(username) gitCommitStep(username) waitForBuildStep() email = retrieveUserEmailStep(username) sendPrivateKeyStep(email) I get that it feels more modular - "oh all I need to do to add a step is add it to the list!" But like, all you need to do to add a step is add a line of code. There's no difference. Much easier to see how the data is actually flowing that way. I found the fact that the context was mutated in a function it was passed into kind of gross. It's just globals with extra steps. Besides, this is less LOC anyway.
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