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Comment by ethbr0 | Hacker News Reader

Absolutely!

Here's how conversations typically go -- Dev: "Why are you using this? Why don't you use X?" Business: "Are you willing to write interface code to {legacy system}?" Dev: {crickets} Business: "Well, RPA it is then."

To dang's point, apologies for the insinuation, which doesn't seem to be borne out by the submitters' post histories anyway.

A more supported hypothesis is as you said: "This isn't something that a lot of HN-type devs care about or see."

In the same way we don't get many posts about Oracle, VMware, or SAP here, relative to their actual deployments.

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My rule of thumb:

- If there's some boring business process (that usually involves copy-and-pasting)

- Which you just know could be automated easily if only there was an API, but there isn't

- And everyone who's ever asked about an API has been told it's too difficult/expensive/etc to create an API (e.g., for an ancient legacy system)

... then there's the RPA opportunity.

In my opinion, it's not popular on HN for the same reason that legacy systems aren't popular on HN.

It's also known as "swivel chair automation", replacing manual tasks with an automated process.

I’ve heard a few descriptions of swivel chair:

1. swivel chair work is any work that requires someone sitting in front of a computer to do.

2. swivel chair work is when you’re having to swivel your chair from one screen to another. This requires swiveling between applications to complete your work.

3. swiveling the monitor between customer and retail sales associate to collect inputs.

When you’re referring to replacing manual tasks with an automated process, are you referring to 2 above?

Yea, it could be #2. You could think of a person sitting in front of a computer who needs to refer to physical data from printed binders or paper files stored on shelves near the computer. The user would have to swivel their chair to get books/papers to refer to getting input data. It could also involve more than one computer or screen.

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