Worthwhile task shaving

Worthwhile task shaving is a draft programming task. It is not yet considered ready to be promoted as a complete task, for reasons that should be found in its talk page.

Recreate https://xkcd.com/1205/ which shows a (humorous) table of how long you can work on making a routine task more efficient before spending more time than saved, for various s(h)avings against how often the task is run.

There are of course several possible interpretations of "day" and "week" in this context. The Phix implementation assumes 8 hour days and 5 day weeks might be more realistic, whereas it seems the original author worked with 24 hour days and 7 day weeks, and, tbh, my interest is piqued to see what built-in facilities other languages might have for handling such non-standard terms, if any. Extra kudos awarded for getting into the mind of the original author and reproducing their results exactly (see talk page), or drumming up non-trivial (but still elegant) and potentially actually useful routines. This task can be made as trivial or as convoluted as you please, and should aim more for a little playfulness than rigid scientific accuracy.

Phix

with javascript_semantics
constant SEC = 1,
         MIN = 60,
         HOUR = 60*MIN,
         DAY = 8*HOUR,      -- (allow some sleepage)
         WEEK = 5*DAY,      -- (omit weekends)
         MONTH = 4*WEEK,
         YEAR = 12*MONTH,   -- (as 48 weeks/omit holidays)
         shavings = {1,5,30,MIN,5*MIN,30*MIN,HOUR,6*HOUR,DAY},
         frequencies = {{50,DAY},{5,DAY},{1,DAY},{1,WEEK},{1,MONTH},{1,YEAR}},
         roundto = {SEC, MIN, HOUR, DAY, WEEK, MONTH, YEAR},
         ts = {"sec", "min", "hour", "day", "week", "month", "year"}

function duration(atom a)
    string es
    for rdx=1 to length(roundto) do
        atom t = trunc(a/roundto[rdx])
        if rdx>1 and t<1 then exit end if
        es = sprintf("%d %s%s",{t,ts[rdx],iff(t=1?"":"s")})
    end for
    return es
end function

printf(1,"               50/day       5/day       daily      weekly     monthly      yearly\n")
for s=1 to length(shavings) do
    integer si = shavings[s]
    string line = sprintf("%10s ",duration(si))
    for f=1 to length(frequencies) do
        integer {per,slot} = frequencies[f]
        if si*per > slot then
            line &= sprintf("%10s  ","n/a")
        else
            atom shaving = (5*YEAR/slot * per) * si
            line &= sprintf("%10s  ",duration(shaving))
        end if
    end for
    printf(1,"%s\n",line)
end for

Output:

One outlier here is 1hr 5/day ==> 3 years vs original 10 months: as per notes above for 5/8ths the cutoff is indeed 3 years.
Note that the standard builtins such as elapsed() have no facilities for non-standard terms such as 8 hour working days.

               50/day       5/day       daily      weekly     monthly      yearly
     1 sec     2 days      1 hour     20 mins      4 mins       1 min      5 secs
    5 secs    2 weeks       1 day      1 hour     20 mins      5 mins     25 secs
   30 secs   3 months      1 week       1 day     2 hours     30 mins      2 mins
     1 min   6 months     2 weeks      2 days     4 hours      1 hour      5 mins
    5 mins    2 years    3 months     2 weeks      2 days     5 hours     25 mins
   30 mins        n/a      1 year    3 months     3 weeks      3 days     2 hours
    1 hour        n/a     3 years    7 months     1 month      1 week     5 hours
   6 hours        n/a         n/a     3 years    9 months    2 months      3 days
     1 day        n/a         n/a     5 years      1 year    3 months      1 week

Wren

This is quite close to the original table but no cigar. <lang ecmascript>import "./fmt" for Fmt

var shaved = [1, 5, 30, 60, 300, 1800, 3600, 21600, 86400] // time shaved off in seconds var columns = ["1 SECOND", "5 SECONDS", "30 SECONDS", "1 MINUTE", "5 MINUTES",

              "30 MINUTES", "1 HOUR", "6 HOURS", "1 DAY"]

var diy = 365.25 var minute = 60 var hour = minute * 60 var day = hour * 24 var week = day * 7 var month = day * diy / 12 var year = day * diy

var freq = [50 * diy, 5 * diy, diy, diy/7, 12, 1] // frequency per year var mult = 5 // multiplier for table

var fmtTime = Fn.new { |t, interval|

  t = t.floor
  var pl = (t == 1) ? "" : "S"
  Fmt.write("$-12s ", t.toString + " " + interval + pl)

}

Fmt.print("$93m", "HOW OFTEN YOU DO THE TASK") Fmt.lprint("$-12s | $-12s $-12s $-12s $-12s $-12s $-12s", ["SHAVED OFF", "50/DAY", "5/DAY", "DAILY", "WEEKLY", "MONTHLY", "YEARLY"]) System.print("-" * 93) for (y in 0..8) {

   Fmt.write("$-12s | ", columns[y])
   for (x in 0..5) {
       var t = freq[x] * shaved[y] * mult
       if (t < minute) {
            fmtTime.call(t, "SECOND")
       } else if (t < hour) {
            fmtTime.call(t/minute, "MINUTE")
       } else if (t < day) {
            fmtTime.call(t/hour, "HOUR")
       } else if (t < 14 * day) {
            fmtTime.call(t/day, "DAY")
       } else if (t < 9 * week) {
            fmtTime.call(t/week, "WEEK")
       } else if (t < year) {
            fmtTime.call(t/month, "MONTH")
       } else {
            System.write(" " * 13)
       }
   }
   System.print()

}</lang>

Output:

                                  HOW OFTEN YOU DO THE TASK                                  
SHAVED OFF   | 50/DAY       5/DAY        DAILY        WEEKLY       MONTHLY      YEARLY      
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 SECOND     | 1 DAY        2 HOURS      30 MINUTES   4 MINUTES    1 MINUTE     5 SECONDS    
5 SECONDS    | 5 DAYS       12 HOURS     2 HOURS      21 MINUTES   5 MINUTES    25 SECONDS   
30 SECONDS   | 4 WEEKS      3 DAYS       15 HOURS     2 HOURS      30 MINUTES   2 MINUTES    
1 MINUTE     | 2 MONTHS     6 DAYS       1 DAY        4 HOURS      1 HOUR       5 MINUTES    
5 MINUTES    | 10 MONTHS    4 WEEKS      6 DAYS       21 HOURS     5 HOURS      25 MINUTES   
30 MINUTES   |              6 MONTHS     5 WEEKS      5 DAYS       1 DAY        2 HOURS      
1 HOUR       |                           2 MONTHS     10 DAYS      2 DAYS       5 HOURS      
6 HOURS      |                                        2 MONTHS     2 WEEKS      1 DAY        
1 DAY        |                                        8 MONTHS     8 WEEKS      5 DAYS