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Scripting utility suggestions?

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mouser:
I'm just blown away with skrommel's results with AutoHotKey in the coding snacks section; it's free and clearly has a kick ass community behind it, who are clearly skilled and willing to help.  AutoIt similarly.

kfitting:
Yeah I've just recently gotten into AutoIt... did some programs for work that left me astounded as to just how much can be done with it.   Echoing mouser, from skrommel's scripts it appears that AutoHotKey has just as valid a "program."  These types of programs allow even non coders like me make programs to do things that we've only dreamed about.  At work, scripting (VBA and AutoIt) allow me to focus on engineering rather than on running the associated programs (well, once I get done programming and scripting of course!). 

Just a quick question mouser; how does a "real coder" like you feel about these types of languages?  They make it relatively easy to make programs, though the programs they produce tend to be a tad bloated do to their ease of use (eg, 4 meg of memory for a simple script).  In other words, do you feel like they are dumbing down the coder base?  I think all areas have this type of thing... film photographers decry the digital because digital makes taking pictures so easy, etc.  Interested to hear your thoughts, and anyone else's for that matter.

Kevin

mouser:
there is definitely some snobber in programming circles regarding the hierarchy of programming languages.

the RAD languages like delphi and the scripting/macro languages can sometimes cause hardcore programmers to roll their eyes.

much of it is just jelousy - a feeling of frustration that if it takes us 1 month to make a proper text editor, you shouldn't be able to just drop an icon on a form and having a fully functioning program.

my feeling is that you use the right tool for the job, but have some concern for the underlying structure of the solution.

i tend to use Borland C++ Builder for big gui windows projects (its like delphi), just because its so much faster to build GUI stuff.  it would take 10x longer to write some of this stuff in windows MFC stuff.

the fair complaint that can be lodged against such scripting/RAD languages, and you see it leveled against VB programmers all the time, is not so much that the language itself is inherently bad, but that the people who use it tend to have a very shallow grasp of programming.  and this is sometimes true.  because these tools make it so easy to jump right in and make a program that looks real, it allows less experienced programmer to play in the same arena as the big boys, and sometimes that results in programs that look ok at first glance but are horrible messy and buggy, etc.

there are also languages like perl which are super powerful but which some programmers like me thing are evil just because they seem to promote horrible habits (its funny because this is the complaint usually lodged against BASIC, but perl has a much better reputation).

bottom line: use the right tool for the job and don't let people convince you you're not doing real programming.  it's just a matter of scale.

jpfx:
I'll see your evil (perl) programing and raise you a 'un-normalised'relational database!

Edvard:
I fold.
(found holding a pair of Jacks- Euphoria and L.in.oleum)

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