AutoIt for automation scripting?

[Valik]

This seems mostly like bitching out of ignorance. You're wrong about half the stuff you've said and the other half is stuff you just haven't bothered to learn. What exactly is the point of this thread? Is it to annoy the veteran users (it's working)? Is it to get me to dismiss you as white noise (it's working)? Is it to learn without having to spend time learning? I don't see the point in all this. You have only like one real useful comment... except we have known for a long time and somebody recently put it in writing (#1191). Otherwise I don't get this.

[ProgAndy]

(btw: increment operator would be nice - is somthing like ++$<var> ... $<var>-- planned for a future release?)

create your own ...

expandcollapse popup

; increment "before return"
; Author: Prog@ndy
Func pp(ByRef $val)
    $val += 1
    Return $val
EndFunc

; decrement "before return"
; Author: Prog@ndy
Func mm(ByRef $val)
    $val -=1
    Return $val
EndFunc

; increment "after return"
; Author: Prog@ndy
Func ppb(ByRef $val)
    $val += 1
    Return $val-1
EndFunc

; decrement "after return"
; Author: Prog@ndy
Func mmb(ByRef $val)
    $val -=1
    Return $val+1
EndFunc

ConsoleWrite("+ increment before return: "& @CRLF)
$i = 0
ConsoleWrite("start: " & $i & @CRLF)
While pp($i) <5
    ConsoleWrite($i & @CRLF)
WEnd
ConsoleWrite("end: " & $i & @CRLF)

ConsoleWrite(@CRLF & "+ decrement before return: "& @CRLF)
ConsoleWrite(">start: " & $i & @CRLF)
While mm($i) >0
    ConsoleWrite($i & @CRLF)
WEnd
ConsoleWrite(">end: " & $i & @CRLF)

ConsoleWrite(@CRLF & "+ increment after return: "& @CRLF)
$i = 0
ConsoleWrite(">start: " & $i & @CRLF)
While ppb($i) < 5
    ConsoleWrite($i & @CRLF)
WEnd
ConsoleWrite(">end: " & $i & @CRLF)

ConsoleWrite(@CRLF & "+ decrement after return: "& @CRLF)
ConsoleWrite(">start: " & $i & @CRLF)
While mmb($i) >0
    ConsoleWrite($i & @CRLF)
WEnd
ConsoleWrite(">end: " & $i & @CRLF)

[Bert]

Complaining that a language doesn't have what you need and has a bunch of stuff you see no need to have is arrogant and rude to say the least. Do you go into a restaurant and complain about the menu for it has items on it you don't like and has too many items? I hope not.

To simply put it: AutoIt isn't about you. It is about a community.

I can safely say for many of the folks you have annoyed with your poor choice of words and having your own head in your own ass behavior - it would be wise for you to re-examine your approach on how you look at things (and treat people for that manner) before you bitch and complain further to the fine folks here who have worked their ass off to make AutoIt what it is.

[Valik]

Oh snap, Volly was more "rude" than me with his response. That's... outstanding. Unprecedented... but outstanding.

[Bert]

Thank you....

Thank you very much!

[JRowe]

Yeah, I'm heading to the bomb shelter now. If that's not a sign that the world is ending, I don't know what is.

[memoryoverflow]

I've never attempted a mental tally as to which group posts more? Gamers or non-gamers. But I would think that gamers make more posts per problem/question than those using AutoIt in the workplace. Of course, some people use AutoIt for both. ¹

I remember each of your points having been raised before, ... ²

Welcome to the forum. ³

¹)Sure, and as stated, it was a first perception from my very first session. It has shifted and will probably keep doing so with raising experience with the tool itself as well as with the forums.

Meanwhile I think that serious users open fewer topics but with more answers / serious discussion. Partly due to the moderation closing threads of the most irresponsible (would-be) hackers. Good job in that respect.

²) Not surprising with people not coming from Basic. My first perception (for the others: mind the phrasing) was like a blast from the past - the Basic like I used it in DOS some 3 decades ago, I was happy to have gotten rid of in the meantime.

Also here, my perception has changed (partly due to a vague recollection of that Basic being close to the assemblers I used before in some respects): The percieved lack of higher abstraction may well be the trade-off for having a light weight tool bringing an amazing efficiency into the compiled code that otherwise would need way more optimization effort.

And perhaps Basic has indeed still a lower threshold for would-be programmers.

Anyway, the whole thread was not meant as a "complaint" (would be ridiculous for the price I've paid to the creators) as I've explicitly pointed out. I started it to find out if it can still be the right tool for me and to clarify facets I wasn't certain to have correctly understood.

³) Thanks 'herewasplato'

and thanks to all the others who have bothered to take time helping an AutoIt rookie on the way of grasping the concept.

This seems mostly like bitching out of ignorance. You're wrong about half the stuff you've said and the other half is stuff you just haven't bothered to learn. ¹

What exactly is the point of this thread? ²

Is it to annoy the veteran users (it's working)? ³

Is it to get me to dismiss you as white noise (it's working)? ⁴

Is it to learn without having to spend time learning? I don't see the point in all this. ⁵

You have only like one real useful comment... except we have known for a long time and somebody recently put it in writing (#1191). Otherwise I don't get this. ⁶

Hi 'Valik' (and don't think you aren't included in above thanks for bothering).

¹) How can lack of knowledge (and call it ignorance if you get a kick out of it) or "stuff [i] just haven't [yet] bothered to learn[ed]" be such an issue at a help forum? If I knew that all, the thread would indeed be pointless.

²) I hoped to have clarified that in the opening and in a subsequent answer, when I got the perception that some people here might get hold of the wrong end of the stick, and tried to reassert from where I'm coming in the 3rd paragraph of this post.

If there's still something unclear about it, then please tell me what I didn't express understandable (I'm not a native English speaker/writer - as I have also pointed out explicitly) and I'll once more try to rephrase it.

³) Why should it? What would be the point? Would be ridiculous, wouldn't it? And I have no doubt (and nowhere expressed that I had) that it's working.

⁴) "What exactly is the point of this"? I don't mean the... "threatening"? I'd like to learn what I'm doing wrong in your eyes to avoid repetition.

⁵) Well, this contains certainly a true core (as with each and every question posted in this board). As stated from the beginning, I opened the thread after my first 2-nights-1-day-session with the tool. I felt at a loss to decide, if it was the right way for me to go, if I'd invest more time in learning about the (for me) unresolved facets.

If asking in the help forum in search of a shortcut to learning each and every thing by yourself alone (I can't think of anything you can't find out yourself with unlimited try/error/retry), what then is its function?

⁶) Sorry, I don't understand what that means.

I can positively assert that the discussions here and in other threads I posted have improved my grasp of AutoIt's concept and that and how it can be usefull for me, if that was the question.

create your own ...

Hi 'ProgAndy' & thanks for your taking the time, but...

it's not the same (and it's not important either).

I don't understand why an issue has been made out of it, anyway. I called it a "nice to have" and parenthesized it as an aside.

It's only point is to raise maintainabillty (slightly), nothing worth to argue.

Complaining that a language doesn't have what you need and has a bunch of stuff you see no need to have is arrogant and rude to say the least. ¹

Do you go into a restaurant and complain about the menu for it has items on it you don't like and has too many items? I hope not.²

To simply put it: AutoIt isn't about you. It is about a community. ³

I can safely say for many of the folks you have annoyed with your poor choice of words...

... in your own ass behavior ⁴

... and treat people for that manner ... you bitch and complain further...⁵

Hi 'Volly', and thanks for the opportunity to realize even more the possibilities for missperception of my intention.

Reading becomes harder with tempers raising, so I don't blame anyone for commenting without having read.

¹) I haven't complained, I just wanted to find out if the power of the tool for my tasks makes up for the felt shortcomings of the language itself. And yes, I have the answer: It does.

²) I don't recall having called "a bunch of stuff [you see] no need to have".

There's certainly a host of functions for which I (currently?) have no application, but that can never be a criterion for depreciating a tool, and I don't know which comment you can have misunderstood in that way.

³) To simply put what? I didn't start to find out anything being "about me", I tried to find out if it's usefull for me. And sure, a future step is to find what I can contribute as an exchange for using it for free.

⁴) Sorry for that, I didn't mean to offend anyone. Please account for that by my limited command of what's a foreign language for me...

... and the obvious culture gap.

What exactly did annoy you? (And perhaps a PM would be more appropriate for that matter.)

⁵) I'm not aware of having 'treated' anyone, if so I didn't intend to. But I whatever I write, it won't help if it's not read. I still hope that the 'bitching' part has been clarified as a missunderstanding.

[Valik]

memoryoverflow, here's the crux of the issue several people have with you. Your first post in this thread comes off very condescending with the phrases you are using. I'm going to call bullshit on the non-native English speaker excuse here. English very well may not be your primary language but it's very clear to me as someone who is something of a cunning linguist () that your grasp on English is sufficient to know the way you've put things is not as neutral as it could be. Your ignorance stems from your stated and otherwise obvious lack of time spent familiarizing yourself with the language by reading the documentation. Documentation you snidely call (partly over) packed which is certainly a pejorative way of phrasing it, at best. It's ironic that you would choose such terms because the documentation is thorough but by no means complete by which I intend to imply that it could contain more information.

You came on here claiming their were "holes" in the language (again, this is pejorative) but really the only holes were in your knowledge which is inexcusable because everything is documented. There's as much or more time spent in documenting the language as writing it... and you bashed that fact with the aforementioned "(partly over) packed" remark. Couple that with a history of the veterans around here have something resembling disdain for people who can't be bothered to read the documentation (since they know it's thorough and usually contains the answers) and, well, you didn't really make any friends.

Edited October 4, 2009 by Valik
Missing words are the root of all.

[memoryoverflow]

Well, my English has obviously not sufficed to convey that I have been describing a first perception, including the hope that it be wrong and that the thread will clarify it (which it did).

The 2nd, probably deeper, "crux" is the apparent culture gap, which doesn't relate so much to nationality or missing contacts to other nationalities (I've worked for decades for American IT companies):

In my environment noone would take offence at someone laying out a personal perception (however wrong) and asking for clarification/correction. On the other hand, the use of e.g. some a*-words would be considered an attempt of personal insulting and perceived as ... well, don't have to elaborate on this. Beeing aware of the possibillity of culture gaps, I do not adopt this perception.

The 3rd crux stems indeed from a severe lack of time. The need of a 40+ hours session to decide whether to follow an approach or try a different one may illustrate that. (I mean the pressure that pushes me in such a session rather than spreading it over a week or so.)

As for the documentation: That's a diffcult part for every tool with a wide range of applications. What serves some users well, may not work as well for others. Gradually grasping the concept of AutoIt's core documentation, I appreciate the way of its implementation higher and higher. It differs considerably from what I'm used to and is gradually revealing a not yet seen efficiency.

Where I still see difficulties is in the UDFs, and that's the part my criticized phrasings refer to. There the quality of documentation but more of a clear concept looks differing very much between the libraries to me. This does not include a depreciation of the effort that the contributers (who, like me, wouldn't have all the time in the world) donate to the community.

For me, the biggest first hurdle (which I perceived as a possible road block) was date handling (and, being used to a higher abstraction level, a missconception of Arrays in Basic).

The hurdle is now taken: I'm in the middle of composing a hopefully clearer library for handling Gregorian dates (sometime to be followed by a seperate one for Julian dates).

Btw: For readers, who stumble upon this thread when performing a search on "StringJoin".

I've found it meanwhile and, as pointed out earlier in this thread, it's not _ArrayConcatenate(), but _ArrayToString() in a different library than StringSplit().

[Valik]

As for the documentation: That's a diffcult part for every tool with a wide range of applications. What serves some users well, may not work as well for others. Gradually grasping the concept of AutoIt's core documentation, I appreciate the way of its implementation higher and higher. It differs considerably from what I'm used to and is gradually revealing a not yet seen efficiency.

Then I'm not sure what you are used to. I can easily move from AutoIt to Lua to Python to C++ without even stopping to think about what language I'm in because fundamentally the same concepts apply give or take object-oriented support. Unless you're used to a language like Forth, I don't really see what your problem could be.

For me, the biggest first hurdle (which I perceived as a possible road block) was date handling (and, being used to a higher abstraction level, a missconception of Arrays in Basic).

The hurdle is now taken: I'm in the middle of composing a hopefully clearer library for handling Gregorian dates (sometime to be followed by a seperate one for Julian dates).

So instead of building on top of the existing code to develop something, you are devising your own library from scratch? That is in a word: Stupid.

[memoryoverflow]

Meanwhile I've re-read my opening (not for the first time, but in a more alert state). An all-but-aggressive PM referring to its tone put me out of the feeling to have to defend and let me read it more neutrally.

And well, it's easy if not likely to get a completely wrong picture of my attitude from it. Accounting for profound fatigue and considerable frustration from trying to solve my DateTime handling needs with what I found is the only way I can now relive its ill phrasing myself.

So, please accept my explicit apologies.

These go especially to the contributors of the libraries, which don't seem to answer my personal needs.

As for the core language, I'm probably just blindfolded for its strengths (other than I have the perception that it's very efficiently compiled) by not having used it for a long time. AutoIt's power in the realm of its specialties makes definitely up for it.

What started out as an attempt for short cutting the path to answers, which with unlimited time I may have found myself, has turned into a lesson in social matters consuming considerable time itself.

And it was worth it.

(I'm normally not so obtuse as the first part of the thread might suggest - sometimes a bit slow, but that's it - and always willing to learn.)

[jvanegmond]

What started out as an attempt for short cutting the path to answers, which with unlimited time I may have found myself, has turned into a lesson in social matters consuming considerable time itself.

And it was worth it.

Welcome to the forums.

What I mean by that is: You're definitely not the first to find this.

[Zedna]

...

What started out as an attempt for short cutting the path to answers, which with unlimited time I may have found myself, has turned into a lesson in social matters consuming considerable time itself.

And it was worth it.

(I'm normally not so obtuse as the first part of the thread might suggest - sometimes a bit slow, but that's it - and always willing to learn.)

Welcome to Autoit comunity.

Without this your post I would ignore you after your first dumb replies to some answers.

As you can see you must take care of each written word and read carefuly replies in written communication on the forums.

[memoryoverflow]

What a relief! But thanks for the Welcome!

Hope we'll eventually get back to tech-topics.