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Automated Work Recordings with OBS Studio and TaskWarrior and TimeWarrior

by knur on 6/3/20, 11:45 PM with 17 comments

• by memexy on 6/4/20, 5:34 AM

  Here's an article that outlines how recording yourself write code can help with improving productivity: https://malisper.me/how-to-improve-your-productivity-as-a-wo....

  > Watching Myself Code

  > One incredibly useful exercise I’ve found is to watch myself program. Throughout the week, I have a program running in the background that records my screen. At the end of the week, I’ll watch a few segments from the previous week. Usually I will watch the times that felt like it took a lot longer to complete some task than it should have. While watching them, I’ll pay attention to specifically where the time went and figure out what I could have done better. When I first did this, I was really surprised at where all of my time was going.

  > For example, previously when writing code, I would write all my code for a new feature up front and then test all of the code collectively. When testing code this way, I would have to isolate which function the bug was in and then debug that individual function. After watching a recording of myself writing code, I realized I was spending about a quarter of the total time implementing the feature tracking down which functions the bugs were in! This was completely non-obvious to me and I wouldn’t have found it out without recording myself. Now that I’m aware that I spent so much time isolating which function a bugs are in, I now test each function as I write it to make sure they work. This allows me to write code a lot faster as it dramatically reduces the amount of time it takes to debug my code.

  The main benefit comes from review. If you review the slow parts then you notice the patterns that slowed you down.

• by Nextgrid on 6/4/20, 8:32 AM

  I would be very concerned with the "upload to YouTube" part.

  Even private videos on YouTube can still be accessed by their engineers and might get exposed to the public in case of a bug.

  Especially as a developer you most likely have access to confidential things, whether it's code (that could reveal internals of the business you're working for, or a very efficient algorithm that can be considered a trade secret and the company would want to protect it) or secrets (API keys, etc) that might be temporarily displayed on the screen while you're copy/pasting them around.

• by PeterStuer on 6/4/20, 6:59 AM

  Nice for self development, but in the wrong hands this looks like a Taylorist micromanager's wet dream.

• by microcolonel on 6/4/20, 1:34 PM

  One thing I've been looking into is automated time dilation. I get that part of the thing with these sorts of screencasts is waiting for the host to think; but a lot of the time things are resolved with documentation instead. If you spend ten minutes waiting for the host to find the right documentation, it may not be the greatest.

• by choward on 6/4/20, 6:27 AM

  > I find it funny that all of the videos have Copyright complaints, because I listen to a lot of music while coding.

  Pretty ridiculous especially with private videos. I would definitely shop the upload to YouTube part if I tried this.

• by Rainymood on 6/4/20, 8:25 AM

  I love this. Thanks for sharing. I've been streaming myself and recording myself doing something always makes me narrate it through, when you are alone without a camera this feeling of having to "talk yourself through" is not there. This can of course easily be abused by a micro manager but uploading it as a private YT video, never thought of that.

  Thanks for sharing, this is the stuff I browse HN for.

• by vga805 on 6/4/20, 3:19 AM

  This is interesting. Have you noticed any practical effects on your workflow or productivity?

• by xchaotic on 6/4/20, 10:45 AM

  I would also like to know if this can improve productivity. Watching me coding is the most boring thing I can think of so I doubt I would actually ever go back to those videos - I guess it’s more of a physiological trick

• by burnett2k on 6/4/20, 1:44 PM

  Taskwarrior sounds really interesting. I built my own pomodoro timer which has similar functionality, but it is browser-based and sometimes gets in the way.

• by noyesno on 6/4/20, 7:38 AM

  If you would just like to track how you spend your time, ManicTime is a good, off-line first solution.