Notes on  BY HAND 

1. [common] Said of an operation (especially a repetitive, trivial,
and/or tedious one) that ought to be performed automatically by the
computer, but which a hacker instead has to step tediously through.
"My mailer doesn't have a command to include the text of the message
I'm replying to, so I have to do it by hand." This does not
necessarily mean the speaker has to retype a copy of the message; it
might refer to, say, dropping into a subshell from the mailer, making
a copy of one's mailbox file, reading that into an editor, locating
the top and bottom of the message in question, deleting the rest of
the file, inserting `>' characters on each line, writing the file,
leaving the editor, returning to the mailer, reading the file in, and
later remembering to delete the file. Compare EYEBALL SEARCH.

2. [common] By extension, writing code which does something in an
explicit or low-level way for which a presupplied library routine
ought to have been available. "This cretinous B-tree library doesn't
supply a decent iterator, so I'm having to walk the trees by hand."

J3N Research Labs

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