Editing 2565: Latency

{{comic
| number    = 2565
| date      = January 7, 2022
| title     = Latency
| image     = latency.png
| titletext = Each SCAPDFATIAT point increases the chance that the process will involve the phrase 'by the next business day.'
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by SOMEONE WITH "20 years of Ctrl-C Ctrl-V experience" ON THEIR RESUME - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic is about the time it takes for a request to be processed; a total of 1 second is devoted to automated processes, but 2-15 minutes or longer are devoted to a not-yet-automated process that is performed by a human.

Part of the humor comes from the fact that most, if not all, instances of a person copying and pasting data from one place to another could be trivially automated and included as part of the automated steps, if only a programmer could take the [[1205: Is It Worth the Time?|time]] to program the process. Having a human take several minutes to move data that a computer could move in fractions of a second is incredibly inefficient, and reflects the humorously poor optimization present in many routine processes.

The title text refers to SCAPDFATIAT, which is defined in the comic as Someone Copies and Pastes Data From a Thing Into Another Thing.

Because it requires a human worker to fully accomplish, in-between various other work commitments as well as possibly personal/non-work activities, it is plausible that (even if the copying was started promptly enough) the person involved will not have pasted onwards by the time their effective working day ends. It might be reasonable to assume that a job that ought to take no more than a few actual minutes thus is only 'guaranteed' to be concluded at some point the following working day (which may be a whole long weekend away, possibly including public holidays). The business will therefore state (e.g. in contractual service agreements) that the guaranteed response times are of the order of "within one working day". Even if they hope and expect that any request passed to their staff is handled within a much shorter timescale. If reliably capable of being fully automated (e.g. with a resilient and continually maintained server infrastructure), could be fulfilled almost instantly at any time of day or night. But it may be the need to keep an 'intelligent' human in the loop (as well as to "under-promise and over-deliver", rather than the reverse) that makes the concept of "next-working-day" a more attractive commitment to make.

While this comic was up a countdown was added to the xkcd header text, see the [[#Trivia|trivia]].

==Transcript==
:[Caption above a graph showing a bar with 6 lines between the two ends:]
:Typical process latency:

:[The bar is split in two small regions at either end with two times two lines close to each other at the left and only one of those pairs of lines near the right. In between is a very long white area with no features. Above the two small segments at either end, there are small brackets of this type "{" lying down so the tip points up towards a curved line that then goes up to two labels.]
:Left: Automated steps: 800 ms
:Right: Automated steps: 200 ms

:[A similar, but very long, bracket is below the bar indicating the long white area in the middle. The tip points down to a label:]
:Someone copies and pastes data from a thing into another thing: 
:2-15 minutes 
:(More if the person on call is busy)

==Trivia==
===Countdown===
*While this comic was up the [[xkcd Header text]] was [[xkcd_Header_text#2022-01-08_-_Back_to_standard_text|changed back]] to the [[xkcd_Header_text#Header_text|standard text]] for the first time in almost three years:
**xkcd updates every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. 
*But already while this Friday comic was still up on Monday a [[xkcd_Header_text#2022-01-10_-_Standard_text_with_countdown|countdown]] was added.
**See more on the links but the countdown was most likely started at 20d 21h 59m.
**The first archived version from [https://web.archive.org/web/20220110183238/https://xkcd.com/ 2022-01-10] read 20d 20h 27m.
**At [https://web.archive.org/web/20220111153818/https://xkcd.com/ 2022-01-11] a diagonal black bar appeared in the lower left-hand corner of the countdown box.
**This countdown will reach zero on Monday 2022-01-31 at 14:59 (2:59 PM) {{w|UTC}}, or 9:59 AM in Boston, Randall's home town. 

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]