Automating automation

Whenever I spot myself doing something repeatedly on a computer, I try to automate it. Consequently, I have a directory full of random little scripts, and a long list of aliases in my .bash_profile, all of which arose because I had to do something lots of times. Often, these scripts and aliases call other ones which I wrote earlier, as I spot higher-level patterns in what I'm doing. But every time, I have to fight against the False Laziness that tells me not to bother, I'll only have to do it once or twice more, and it's not worth the effort of doing it right.

So yesterday I added the following line to my .bash_profile:

alias viprof="vim ~/.bash_profile && source ~/.bash_profile"

We'll see how it works out.