Automation and Bombasticity
I’m giving myself a much-deserved break this afternoon, because I believe I have just taken two days to write, debug, and execute a custom script that has the ability to do what I would estimate as three to five man-weeks of manual effort in about fifteen minutes of heavy computation.
It is 366 lines of heavily-commented VBScript. It takes about 430 individual Excel files, merges them into 24 consolidated files, adds summary sheets with subtotals of all the individual sheets, and then calculates quantities based on a separate spreadsheet full of calculation premises, populating each individual sheet (and hence the rollups) with lots of data.
The script itself is guided by a spreadsheet full of instructions as to how the spreadsheets should be organized in their final form, which it parses through visibly on the screen.
When this thing runs, Excel instances fly all over the screen, doing a little pulsing trick on the taskbar that is somewhat amusing to watch. In fact, I have come to the conclusion that computer guys generally love automation because it implies a hit of “intelligent life” in their creations.
Despite the fact that this is effectively the traditional meat-grinder of input – processing – output, it feels somewhat different, especially since the efforts of the program are so recognizably visible through the Excel manipulations that are actually occurring in high-speed on the screen.
Anyway, it was a blast. I wouldn’t have thought I would get to do coding on this level for this job, of all things.
As far as Cluster goes, it’s great to be back, and I’m kicking myself for waiting so long to post. Despite having no clue as to his involvement in the story, I am especially excited about Ripperton Savant, just because of the name and brief description.
Anyway, off to pack up.