Early on as a dev, I made the mistake of doing exactly what I was asked. Basically I learned that user control was better than automation in some cases. I had to write a script to select batches of files from a larger number for translation/annotation with certain proportions of various characteristics. There was some amount of self balancing involved, and I wrote a cli program that did this well. I took a process that previously took days (often communication lag) dozens of times per year and brought it down to milliseconds.

The problem was that the humans involved didn't really want what they asked for. They wanted control. They wanted to select a batch with certain characteristics, then another batch with others. They wanted to pass a list of files that must be included, a list that must not. They wanted audit functionality, they wanted multi-step selection, to mark files for auditing, translation, and different annotations types, to select a batch from one annotations type for another.

At the end of the day, this ever evolving script worked out very well and took away the need for a programmer doing complex sql and filesystem queries. There was still a human involved, but that was because the human wanted to be involved. The process taught me about users wanting something other than what they ask for, scope creep, and also showed me the value that could be generated via a fairly simple script created in collaboration with the user.